Rubik’s Cube turns 50 on new Hungarian issue

By Scott Tiffney

On Jan. 30 Magyar Posta, Hungary’s postal service, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the patenting of the Rubik’s Cube with the release of a round 1,000-forint stamp available in a numbered souvenir sheet.

The souvenir sheet and a first-day cover for the issue were designed by Hungarian graphic artist Attila Andre Elekes, who has designed more than 35 Hungarian stamps dating back to the 2018 Ingmar Berman 100th birth anniversary issue (Scott 4459).

The souvenir sheet is printed by ANY Security Printing Company by offset lithography in a quantity of 40,000. A special foldable version of the sheet that results in a trifold standing display is also available. Another available item is a folded plastic version of a Rubick’s Cube with colored squares on each side mimicking the original toy.

For those of a certain age, the six-sided puzzle with colored squares in the shape of a cube provided endless hours of problem-solving fun. The Rubik’s Cube, or Magic Cube as it was originally called, was invented by Hungarian architect and sculptor Erno Rubik.

In the mid-1970s, Rubik was a teacher at Budapest’s Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in the Department of Interior Design. Although most accounts of the toy’s creation suggest that Rubik built the cube as a teaching tool to help his students understand three-dimensional objects, his actual intent was to create a device with moving sectional parts in an attempt to solve the structural problem of moving those parts independently without comprising the integrity of the entire mechanism.

At the time, Rubik didn’t realize he had created an imaginative logic toy until the first time he scrambled the various sections of the cube and tried to restore them to their original positions.

On Jan. 30, 1975, Rubik applied for a patent in Hungary for his “Magic Cube,” receiving the patent later that year on Dec. 31.

In the years since its creation, the toy has become an international phenomenon, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1980s, and is estimated to have entertained more than 1 billion users. Even today worldwide competitions are held in which entrants are timed in their efforts to unscramble the squares of the device.

The design of the numbered souvenir sheet features the round stamp showing a scrambled Rubik’s Cube in the center on a white background. Forming a frame around the stamp on the sheet are squares and rectangles in the remaining colors of the toy’s moving parts: yellow, red, blue, green and orange.

The available first-day cover pictures a Rubik’s Cube to the left underneath the Hungarian official logo for the 50th anniversary of the toy’s patent. On the right is the souvenir sheet with the stamp canceled with a black postmark of the anniversary logo.

Ordering information for the Rubick’s Cube 50th anniversary issue souvenir sheet and FDC is available online at the Maygar Posta website and the WOPA+ Stamps and Coins website.

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