The Rubik’s TouchCube first surfaced back in February earlier this year, and the “available sometime in the Fall” release date that was given translates to very soon, if not already. The official Rubik’s TouchCube website claims the cube is already available at Best Buy, though a quick search of their online store returned no results, while The New York Times Gadgetwise blog claims it will be in stores on October 18, just a few weeks away.
For those who haven’t seen it before, the Rubik’s TouchCube is essentially the same sliding puzzle toy you had as a kid, except the moving parts and colored stickers have been replaced with illuminated panels and touch sensors that allow you to turn or twist a series of squares simply by swiping your finger across them. And for nostalgia’s sake there’s even an option to turn on an accompanying sound effect that’s an actual recording of the original cube’s twisting sound.
The best part is that thanks to a “powerful processor” inside, the TouchCube always knows the exact number of moves needed to solve it, though I imagine you could get all the sides back to a uniform color by simply resetting it. It definitely looks a lot cooler than the original, but is it $150 worth of cool?
It might not be quite as complicated as the Petaminx dodecahedral puzzle we brought you back in March, but if you don’t have the plastic casting skills of Jason Smith to make your own, this twelve sided IQ Pentagon puzzle from Brando is probably your best alternative. It’s just $49.90 and if you do order one I suggest snapping a few photos when it arrives because once you mess it up I’m pretty sure you’re never going to get it back to its original state.
I’m impulsive, but heck… not this much. But when I saw the Buckyballs from Zoomdoggle, I made a purchase right away. Like, within 30 seconds. It’s a set of 216 small rare earth magnets that can be reconfigured in endless ways. It’s a toy. It’s crazy stupid and useless, kind of like a Hula Hoop or a Rubik’s Cube. But if you watch the video below, I bet you’ll want your own.
They’re $30 plus shipping, and free shipping if you buy two. Use promo code “GetBucked” for 10% off.
It’s not that hard to make your own custom Rubik’s Cube, all you really need is enough patience and perseverance to replace 54 little stickers. But the results can easily make the puzzle-solving experience a lot harder. Take this Mega Man Rubik’s Cube redux for example. Instead of getting all the same colors on each side, you need to re-assemble scenes from all six boss battles from the original NES version of the game. Definitely harder than a standard Rubik’s Cube, but still not as difficult as I remember Mega Man itself being.
As a kid I never had the patience to solve a Rubik’s Cube, perhaps now that I’m a bit older and wiser I might be up to the challenge. Of course that thing is old news, what with the Rubik’s 360 coming out soon.
This sphere actually contains two other plastic spheres with small holes in them. There are six small colored balls inside of these, which you are to navigate successfully to their similarly-colored outer dome compartments. Once there, you have to keep them from falling out while trapping the other balls in place. Of course the most frustrating part is that you can’t just remove the stickers and place them back in the correct order. You should be able to pick one of these up in the UK starting next week for around $15. No word yet on when we’ll see them over here.
While the Rubik’s Cube puzzle is designed to foster frustration, anger and one’s sticker peeling abilities, the Cubicus from Naef Toys is all about design and creativity. It was originally designed by Peer Clahsen in 1968 for Naef Toys, and it consists of a 4-inch wooden block made of up of various shaped pieces that can be disassembled and re-assembled into a myriad of other shapes and structures. This one’s all about design and creativity people, kind of like a stacked zen garden, and it’s available from nova68 Modern Design in red, blue, natural and ash for a mere $138.
Here’s another interesting take on the Rubik’s Cube which turns it from a puzzle into a graphic design tool. It was designed by Jas Bhachu as part of a project at the Liverpool School of Art & Design where students were challenged to produce a visual representation of the word ‘move’. So instead of colored squares, the Rubik’s Font Generator features a set of stamps on 4 sides of the cube allowing the user to create their own basic pixel font by re-arranging the shapes.
It might have brought you years of frustration as a child, but as a grown-up you can now use the power of the Rubik’s Cube for good. Or at least good taste. This set of salt and pepper mills are made to look like the iconic twisting puzzle cubes from the 80’s, but instead of messing up the colored grid pattern, the twisting motion is actually used to grind out your choice of salt or pepper.
They’re available from I Want One Of Those for about $16.55 each. Yeah, you have to buy them separately.
I think “whoa!” is the only response you can really have when you first see this amazing dodecahedral puzzle created by Jason Smith of PuzzleForge.com. While the original design was created by Andrew Cormier, the completed Petaminx puzzle you see above was cast and hand-assembled by Jason, who clearly has the patience of a saint. So what goes into a masterpiece like this? All-in-all there are 975 individual parts not including the 1,212 stickers that each had to be placed by hand, one at a time. Overall the Petaminx took about 75 hours to complete including the molding process, cleaning the parts, assembly and finish, but as you can see in the video below, it only takes about a minute to royally screw the thing up.
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