The Rubig's Cube was the first of the type of puzzles known as twisty puzzles today. A polyhedron, with movable sides, where each piece had one or more coloured stickers and the goal was to return each side to having just one colour on each face. It was invented in 1974, an unlimited release in Budapest began in 1977. Except it wasn't the first. Yes, it was the first being mass produced, but it wasn't the first to be created or even patented. There are at least five other puzzles in a very similar fashion that were created before the cube, some astonishingly similar to Rubig's. Easily the most famous one is the pyramids. Invented in 1971 by Uwe Method, the pyramids wasn't patented until ten years later after he saw how popular the Rubig's Cube was. While it was never as popular as the cube, it was still wildly successful, with 90 million allegedly being sold in the three years after it was introduced. So much so in fact that the puzzle has been an official WCA event since its inception, and there are many people dedicated to it. On the other hand, there were the other cubes. Four twisty puzzle mechanisms that were all invented before the Rubig's Cube, but none of which succeeded and only one was really notable. In 1963, a maths teacher named William Gustafsson was granted a patent for a puzzle that could be considered a precursor to the two by two. It was spherical and used a mechanism where pieces hooked onto a central sphere to move the pieces around. However, when he tried to mark the puzzle, he was rejected by 80 different companies. Seven years later, in England, Frank Fox filed a patent for a similar puzzle. However, this was a three by three sphere, possibly the first created. Like Gustafsson's puzzle, this used hooks and grooves, but these were the part of the pieces themselves and didn't hook into a central sphere. The main idea was a 3D Tiktok Toe game, but he mentioned that the pieces could be covered in colours or letters as well. A Japanese inventor named Tertotoshi Ishigae was granted a patent for a cube extremely similar to Rubig's in 1976. This cube was easily the closest as it featured an internal spindle-like core with pieces held together by said core. Nothing else seems to have come of this, however, and it remained largely unknown. Then there was Larry Nichols. In mechanical puzzle lover all his life, he was walking through his college campus one night in 1957, thinking about how to make the 15 puzzle more challenging. He realised that it was possible to create a cube with 8 pieces that could rotate on 3 separate axes, and it would also be more symmetrical with no missing piece. Two years later, he had managed to construct some preliminary models using magnets for his friends and roommates who were fascinated. In 1968, while working at Molecule on research corporation, Nichols created a prototype that impressed the owner of the company who suggested that they apply for a patent. In 1972, it was granted, and it also described the possibility of puzzles with a larger number of layers. Molecule on attempted to market the puzzle in the US, but failed mainly because the magnets used in the puzzle made it too expensive to produce. Then, a few years later, Nichols saw the Rubig's cube being marketed by Ideal. He was quick to contact them and point out that this is a potential painted infringement, but Ideal refused to acknowledge the painted at all. In 1982, Molecule on sued for $60 million. The ruling was initially in favour of Molecule on, but after CBS, which owned Ideal by then, filed an appeal, it was partly overturned. The 2x2 cube was considered an infringement, but the Rubig's cube was not. As most of the other puzzles were never mass produced, it's hard to imagine what they must have been like. What if the pyramids were first, not the cube? What if Gustafson's 2x2 ball was successful, or if Larry Nichols had his cube produced? Would we be calling the 2x2 Nichols cube? We may never know.