how to solve an aerobics cube 

Rubik's Cube a very square comeback

The iconic game of the 80s is making a comeback, even in math lessons and HRD team building seminars! A clever marketing strategy and the spontaneous birth of a community of “cubers” have brought annual sales to 500,000 units in France alone. Story of a puzzle born in Hungary during the Iron Curtain era.

Before each competition, Jules Desjardin follows the same ritual. He isolates himself, listens to quiet music through his headphones. Then he grabs his Rubik's Cube. The young man solves the famous puzzle in about ten seconds. Once the cube has been “reconstituted” - that is to say when the six faces have found their original solid color - he shuffles it and then solves it again. One, two, three ... 50 times in a row. Simple routine for this 21-year-old student in the third year of Polytechnique, and 2014 French champion in the discipline. "Others go directly into the competition, I need this conditioning", explains Jules quite simply. Here he is ready to enter the arena of the Champagne Open 2016. A village hall in the Reims metropolitan area, where dozens of French speedcubers gathered, one Saturday in September, who came to challenge each other with the clock. That day, it was another student, the reigning French champion, who took the win in the queen event: in 7 seconds and 23 hundredths, Alexandre Carlier overcame a puzzle that titillated generations of players, since its creation in 1974. And withstood many of them ...

From now on, 550 competitions are organized each year around the world around this somewhat incongruous discipline. A very tangible sign of the incredible vitality of this icon from the 80s, sold over 400 million copies, but long forgotten somewhere between cold wave and aerobics. After having been a resounding success, the Rubik's had ended up gathering dust. Complex, it seemed reserved for a caste of gifted adolescents. In 2002, only 50,000 were sold per year in France, far from the heyday. In recent years, the comeback has been spectacular: between 2002 and 2015, sales have increased tenfold, a performance all the more notable as the toy market is practically stagnant. Thierry Karpiel - who has distributed the brand since 2002 in France and has devoted himself exclusively to it since 2014 with his company Win Games - is now targeting one million annual sales. In all forms: keychain, classic 3x3 cube, or miniature 2x2 ...

Its good fortune rediscovered, the Rubik's Cube owes it to a mixture of marketing mastery and a happy combination of circumstances. "To revive a brand, you have to make a successful transfer between nostalgics and the new generation", observes Thierry Karpiel. Thus Rubik's Brand Limited (RBL) - the company which looks after the interests of the cube from London - has imagined a traveling exhibition to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the puzzle in 2014. Starting from New Jersey, it should soon stop in Edmonton, in Canada. Highlight of the show: a cube completely covered ... with diamonds. More kitsch than chic, this unique piece was designed at the end of the 90s by a Texas jeweler, Diamond Cutters International. “We sold it, but we own it again. It is currently worth more than $ 2 million, ”says the company proudly, which dreams of one day bequeathing it to the Smithsonian, the famous scientific institution in Washington. Another way of disseminating cube culture, RBL sponsors the world championships - they will be held in France in 2017. Finally, the Rubik range extends beyond cubes: it comes in several dimensions, in the shape of a pyramid by example, or even of "serpent". Innovations which also make it possible to constitute boxes, which are more expensive to sell.