Petrus was 22 when he walked into the massive concert hall in Budapest, Hungary, birthplace of the cube. In 1981, Petrus became the fastest Rubik’s Cube solver in his native country of Sweden.Īnd as such, in 1982, he found himself at the first-ever Rubik's Cube world championship.
'Were you one of those people playing with the cube in class?' I ask. 'Back in my university days, back in the crazy cube times, you could sit in a lecture hall with 100 people and hear 10 or 15 cubes being discreetly turned around the room,' Lars Petrus remembers. Harry Potter popular.īy 1981, sales were in the hundreds of millions, making it the best-selling toy in history. And when I say 'popular,' I mean, like, Pokemon popular. When the Rubik’s Cube hit shelves worldwide in 1980, it immediately became popular. (Courtesy of Ron van Bruchem) This article is more than 4 years old. Ron van Bruchem (left) and Dan Gosbee in 2013.
