HEART OF THE PALM

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The Most Amazing 80s Cartoon Mascot

Published: August 27th, 2025

Some weeks ago there was this post that did some numbers on twitter that went along the lines of "when a show's intro is so bad you have to stare at the screen like this" followed by that one image of Goob from Meet the Robinsons (great movie btw) and one fateful afternoon I found myself bored and looking through the QRTs to see what people thought an "ass show intro" is.

This is something about me that doesn't come up often to anyone but I have a strange fascination with openings, and this obviously goes for cartoon show intros. I just like them, okay? Sometimes they have funny songs, or a silly animation, or sometimes they have neither but they're still just fun to look at as you try to picture what kind of feelings that would evoke in a child. And it just so happens that, sometimes, those feelings are disgust and boredom.

"Animation twitter," unfortunately, did not seem to understand what makes a cartoon intro bad. Disregarding the outrageous examples like some guy who said the Samurai Jack intro was bad, a lot of them were just good or okay openings from bad shows. Stuff that is tolerable at worse. But you can't really convince me an opening is bad just because the show is. I KNOW what a bad intro is, I've looked up playlists on Youtube.

Just in case you're curious my personal pick for the "worst" would be that terrible Pac-Man song which I know is not a hot take but real shit stinks factually. The Wacky World of Tex Avery is a close second because it's very persistent about pissing you off.

But anyways, this post isn't about cartoon intros. No, it's about one specific intro that I saw in the QRTs of that post. One I'd never seen before. And when I saw that, oh my god let me tell you, my life changed for the better.

Please, experience the most amazing thing you'll see today firsthand. Try not to cum:

Words cannot express the feelings that washed over me when I watched this. It's just beautiful. Colorful, magical and lovable, if you will.

Rubik, The Amazing Cube

80s cartoon show mascots are a strange breed, huh?

Rubik, the Amazing Cube was a 1983 show produced by Ruby-Spears Entertainment, which to be honestly I only know because of their Mega Man cartoon. It ran for a single season. I honestly don't know what to say about it. There's nothing interesting about this show other than the fact it exists, and has THAT mascot.

Can we look at Rubik again?

The big question here is obviously: who the fuck thought this was a good idea? Look, I knew that the 80s were weird when it came to their toy commercials. But a Rubik's cube? Seriously?

THANK GOD they absolutely killed it with the character design. I mean, just look at him. He's so weird, but in a really endearing way. They just put some old blue gremlin's face on a Rubik's cube and it's somehow the best thing I've seen the whole month. I think it speaks for itself, honestly. A lot of cartoon mascots at the time are kind of weird, old looking creatures, but none of them are a fucking Rubik's cube.

Can we look at Rubik again? Again?

I'm not actually going to watch a single episode of this ever, probably, but from what I can tell our amazing fucking friend Rubik here is simply a magic cube that, for no reason, turns into a blue gremlin when it's solved. Every episode has the three main kid characters going on fun and exciting adventures where they need to solve the cube in order to get help from Rubik's magic powers, with some conflict coming from the fact he becomes dormant whenever the cube is scrambled.

But don't be fooled by his innocent appearence: the thing is dangerous. I've only watched a few random seconds from random episodes but here's some of the abilities that thing has:

Telekinesis, seemingly without limitation

Can turn inanimate objects into living creatures, including magical ones

It can also seemingly do the opposite

I'm absolutely sure there's more I haven't bothered enough to find. I might update this list.

Worse even, Rubik seems to be a bit hot-headed, too, and willing to act against the will of his masters when he deems that he knows better. What I'm trying to say is: this thing could be an unstoppable evil entity that will scramble your organs like a rubik's cube. And I don't like it. I think it could beat Goku if it really wanted to. This could shake up the powerscaling community in ways never seen before.

So next time you solve a Rubik's cube, be careful. You don't know what lies inside.

Thankfully, however, no one is at risk of being attacked by a Rubik. Because who the fuck is solving Rubik's cubes?

Rubik's Cubes are a scam toy

Imagine this: You're a kid on your birthday and you can't wait to see what amazing gifts your family has bought to commemorate the fact that the Earth hasn't exploded since the day you were born. As you open your gifts, a number of toys and video game discs and graphic T-shirts any kid would dream of, you find there is one gift left unopened. A small package sent to you by your uncle who visits once every 3 years that you didn't even remember existed until your birthday party. You open the package with high expectations. It's a Rubik's cube. You mess around with that thing for maybe fifteen minutes before realizing that you don't know how to solve it, so you give up.

And then you never touch that shit again.

Now I know this seems like a story that would've happened to me, but no, it really hasn't. But the fact you believed it is what makes it scary. Because Rubik's cubes are a lame fucking toy.

Let's be real: kids want toys they can actually play with. And a Rubik's cube can barely be played with, because it's some complicated puzzle that no kid is actually going to figure out on their own.

Do you know how to solve a Rubik's cube? I do, because I looked it up on the internet. You, on the other hand, most likely don't know. And if you do, did you learn because you actually tried to solve it or did you look up a step-by-step guide online (or maybe in a book, idfk)? Or did you look up algorithms and techniques used to solve it?

There's no "playing" with a Rubik's cube. It can only entertain you for a short while if you don't know how to solve it, and if you do you're in for the competition, for the time records, for the asian kids. But every other kid, including the asian ones who don't give a fuck about that, don't give a fuck about that. They want toys, damn it, not a puzzle they most likely won't solve.

Have you ever seen a kid ask for a Rubik's cube? It's never happened in history. I know in my heart that's for sure. And yet, parents insist because kids who solve Rubik's cubes are "smart." They will make their kid "smart." No they won't, they'll teach your kid how to use the Youtube search function.

What kind of skill do you even get solving a Rubik's cube? As far as I'm concerned, it's just motor skills and memorization. Wow! Why do people associate this with intelligence again? Is it because of the asian kids? All I know for sure is that a lot of people know like, one method to solve Rubik's cubes and that's it, and they show it off like it's the coolest thing ever when anyone can just pick up a guide and do it in five minutes. That's me.

Apparently some cubes are sold with the manuals explaining how to solve them, but I've never actually seen that personally so I'll pretend it's not a real thing.

Anyways I don't have a problem against people who actually solve Rubik's cubes for sport. You're alright. I'm just saying this is not a good toy, and that I'd sooner get my children Yahtzee than a potential omnipotent blue gremlin.

A thought exercise

Have you ever heard of Surf Dracula?

It's not actually a real thing, just a tweet someone made about modern cartoon shows:

At some random day at university, I was thinking about Rubik and thinking: a show like Rubik, The Amazing Cube could only exist in the 80s. But what if it didn't?

So here's a fun thought exercise you can try with any old show: what would it be like if it got a Surf Dracula style reboot today?

The most obvious plot point here would be that the whole first season (which I'd say would also be the only season) is about the kids trying to solve the cube so they can summon Rubik in the last episode. Seems like a decent enough conversion of the original show's premise into a more serialized story, where Rubik stops simply being a plot device and becomes the goal of the main characters itself.

But if we're talking serialized, and the show focuses on the main characters, then why don't we also age them up a little? Make those kids teens in their high school years, looking back and fondly remembering the old days where Rubik would get them into danger, only for them to rush to solve him so he can save the day before they go into a magical telekinectic ride. But times have changed, the Cube was thrown in some drawer and was never solved again. Maybe after some kind of incident where Rubik went psychotic and killed someone? A dark turn to this once innocent story sounds like the perfect twist to me.

Whatever the structure of the show is, one other thing is clear: we need sympathetic villains. Yes, everyone loves those. Thankfully, from what it seems Rubik already has a main antagonist in the form of the magician that originally owned him, who's apparently a recurring character in the show (the original, I mean). Maybe after the cube was stolen from him by the kids, he lost all his best tricks and fell into obscurity, living in poverty until the day he came upon a replacement, a much more powerful, much more intelligent, and much more evil weird little magic gremlin: The Pyraminx.

What the fuck am I even writing anymore.

Conclusion

Anyways, I really don't have a lot to say here. I really just wrote this because I wanted people to learn about this thing's existence, that is, assuming you already haven't seen it in Family Guy or Robot Chicken, in which case, how dare you beat me to it.

I think 80s mascots are stupid as hell and Rubik is an especially egregious case. With that said I unironically love him and I'm not kidding when I say he's the best thing I've seen all month. He will become part of my repertoire of random references, and I'm so, so glad.

To the user who QRT'd that post with the Rubik intro, thank you so, so much. You don't know it but you made my day. I guess that goes to show how something so inoffensible as a tweet barely anybody saw can change the trajectory of someone's life. It didn't change mine but it would be cool if I could say that about Rubik, the Amazing Cube.

Now if you could please buy me this shirt I would appreciate it a lot.

PALM HEART OUT!

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