Maybe because I could never figure the thing out and would lose interest before I made much progress. I always thought that the Rubik's cube was just a fad that I missed out on, since I was never any more than passively interested. Unbelievable!! This will be why so many people have developed the obsessions that they have, some of which last years and years and years and have even spawned medical conditions and support groups. Now, if I have my zeroes and commas calculated correctly, that's 1,400,000,000,000,000 years. There are some statistics given about the toy, such as that it has 43 "quintillion" different possible positions, and that if you were to move one piece every second, it would take 1,400 million million years to create all of the different combinations. What do these people do on a daily/weekly basis? Head on in to the office and see if anyone has shaved a few hundredths of a second off of the standing record? I feel like I know about 75% of all I need to know about the thing from watching this six minute video! On the other hand, there is definitely a lot of fascinating information here. What is amazing to me is not that the Rubik's obsession is alive and well or even that there continue to be people trying to come up with new and exciting (bizarre) ways to solve it, what is amazing to me is that there are actually people, two of which are featured in this short video, whose job title is "Rubik's Cube Documentarian." I really had no idea that there was enough history to the Rubik's cube to necessitate people to have careers documenting and studying it. I knew that there was sort of a whole sub-culture revolving around this peculiar little toy, but I thought that was back in the 80s and maybe early 90s.
Those unconventional nominees, like this year's pots and pans, always raise a few eyebrows.īut, Gomez notes, "Not all of us are well off, and not all of us had the wonderful things we saw in TV commercials.First of all, I had no idea there was this kind of obsession with Rubik's cubes. Matchbox fans weren't happy with the enshrinement of Hot Wheels, vice president for collections Chris Bensch says, and in a tongue-in-cheek rant, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart took the hall to task for inducting the stick and cardboard box before the ball. "It's impossible not to apply your own personal experiences." "I try to pull back and look at the big picture: How much did this toy impact our culture, impact our country?" ESPN producer and judge Amy Rosenfeld says. But that only narrows the list so much.įor this year's finalists, the panel came up with American Girl dolls, Fisher-Price Little People, Hess toy trucks, My Little Pony, Operation, paper airplanes, pots and pans, Slip 'N Slide, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the three winners. Only toys with longevity, icon status and the ability to inspire kids are seriously considered. This year, 434 toys were nominated within 5,000 submissions. The finalists are then sent to the 24 judges, who include inventors, educators, psychologists and others. The group meets several times to choose 12 finalists from nominees that pour in online all year and via postcard and petition. Before making the ballot, toys first have to survive a panel of historians and curators at The Strong museum, where the 16-year-old hall of fame is housed.