Rubik The Amazing Cube

I take back what I said about them making a cartoon out of Mad Balls. Sure they were basically making a TV show out of balls but at least they had faces you could take some inspiration from and build a character around, but this has to be the strangest, most quickly thrown together concept for a cartoon to cash in on a popular toy ever : Rubik's Cube the cartoon, or Rubik The Amazing Cube as he was known. Honestly, they turned this thing into a series of half hour cartoons...

So Rubik the Amazing Cube is some sort or magic cube monster, or alien, or something, with a face and legs, that escapes from an evil magicians stagecoach and ends up being found by the three Rodriguez kids, who are nice and really good at working out Rubik's Cube. That's the story that they wrote on the back of a napkin when they were coming up with this thing. Rubik has lots of powers, like making people fly, moving huge objects, giving the kids super powers and reversing the flow of time. He is all powerful yet seems to just hang out with these three kids all the time, thwarting crooks or helping the kids with being themselves or getting dates for the prom or something. It seems like the little guy is wasting his power. It seems like he can do anything, so I don't understand why it takes him so long to stop the bad guys in the episode I've poster bellow. Perhaps it is due to his one weakness. If his sides get jumbled up then he looses his power and turns into an ordinary cube. It's all or nothing with the little dude. If he was in my hands he would be screwed because I've never been able to solve a Rubik's Cube but the Rodriguez kids can do it in about 3 clicks so I see why he hangs out with them.

It appears to be a pretty standard Scooby Doo-esque kids solving capers kind of show and isn't much to make a fuss over except for it's crazy premise. It is interesting in that this is the only cartoon I can think of where the main characters are Hispanic (excluding Rubik obviously). Unfortunately the voice acting for the kids is painfully awkward, the little girl is particularly clunky. It just doesn't help things.

Check out the episode bellow. The two best bits are the E.T. style flying bikes and when the bad guys say "Trapped by our own lumber". That's an awesome line. Someone stick it on a t-shirt.

So until I find a cartoon based on the hoola hoop or dominos this is deffinately the most random cartoon spin off I've seen.