Rubik, the Amazing Cube was a Saturday morning cartoon

Saturday morning cartoon

A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...

 that aired from 10 September 1983–1 September 1984 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, produced by Ruby-Spears Productions

Ruby-Spears Productions

Ruby-Spears Productions is a Burbank, California-based entertainment production company that specializes in animation...

. The program, broadcast as part of The Pac-Man

Pac-Man (TV series)

Pac-Man is an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera based on the video game Pac-Man by Namco, which premiered on ABC and ran from 1982 to 1983. During the first airing of the show, the large number of advertisers sponsoring it caused commercial breaks to be double their normal length...

/Rubik, the Amazing Cube Hour block on ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

, featured a magic Rubik’s Cube

Rubik's Cube

Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik.Originally called the "Magic Cube", the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that...

 named Rubik who could fly through the air and had other special powers. Rubik could only come alive when the colored squares on his sides had been matched up.

Synopsis

Rubik had fallen out of an evil magician’s stagecoach, that happened to be main villain throughout the show. Rubik helped three siblings — Carlos, Lisa, and Reynaldo Rodriguez — in foiling the magician’s attempts to recover Rubik. Once, Rubik was recovered by a detective who was a relative of the magician, but then decided the children should keep Rubik as the magician would use him for evil and selfish purposes.

Outside of the evil magician, episodes usually dealt with more normal adversaries, such as when the eldest son had run afoul of a bully who had thwarted his efforts to gain a potential girlfriend, while at the same time the bully was making himself appear decent to the girl. Rubik had worked in secret to expose the bully’s true brutal personality in front of the girl.

The Rodriguez children were quite adept at solving , often doing so with only a few movements, even for configurations that were impossible to solve that quickly, although in stressful circumstances it took them longer. Sometimes even animals would solve the cube, just as quickly as the kids could. This was beneficial since Rubik regularly got thoroughly scrambled by simply being dropped, grabbed by the family dog, etc. Rubik was also the first Saturday morning cartoon show to feature Latino children as the main characters.

Episodes

• Rubik the Amazing Cube
• Back Packin' Rubik
• Rubik and the Buried Treasure
• Rubik and the Lucky Helmet
• Rubik and the Mysterious Man
• Rubik and the Pooch Nappers
• Rubik and the Science Fair
• Rubik the Realtor
• Rubik in Wonderland
• Honolulu Rubik
• Rubik's First Christmas
• Rubik Run
• Rubik is Rich
• Rubik Redux
• Rubik at Rest
• Saturday Night Rubik
• Super Power Lisa
• Time Machine Rubik

Theme music

In keeping with the Hispanic flavor of the show, the theme song was done by Puerto Rican

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

 boy band Menudo

Menudo (band)

Menudo was a Puerto Rican boy band that was formed in the 1970s by producer Edgardo Díaz, releasing their first album in 1977. The band achieved much success, especially during the 1980s, becoming the most popular Latin American teen musical group of the era....

.

Cast

• Michael Bell - Reynaldo
• Angela Moya - Marla
• Ron Palillo
  Ron Palillo
  Ronald Gabriel "Ron" Palillo is an American television and film actor, perhaps best known for his role as high school student Arnold Dingfelder Horshack on the ABC sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, which aired from 1975 to 1979....
  
   - Rubik
• Jennifer Fajardo - Lisa
• Michael Saucedo
  Michael Saucedo
  Michael Saucedo is an American actor best known for his role as Juan Santiago on the soap opera General Hospital from 1999 until 2001. He is also a musician.-Personal life:...
  
   - Carlos

Additional Voices by Jack DeLeon

Jack DeLeon

Jack DeLeon was an American actor. He is best known for playing Marty Morrison on the television series Barney Miller from 1975 to 1982. His grave is located at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Simi Valley, California. He was the voice of Sergeant Samuel McPherson in the Dr. Seuss animated telefilm...

, Alan Dinehart

Alan Dinehart

Alan Mason Dinehart was an American Broadway actor, director, writer, stage manager and later, a Character actor and supporting player featured in at least 88 films between 1931 and 1944...

, Laurie Faso

Laurie Faso

Laurie Faso is an American television actor and occasional voice actor. In his career, he has held several bit parts on various shows, in addition to doing voices for several animated series and films, such as The Snorks, Monchichis, Darkwing Duck, Transformers and The Little Troll Prince...

, Takayo Fischer

Takayo Fischer

Takayo Fischer is an American stage, film and TV actress, as well as voice-over actress and singer.-Personal life:Fischer was born in Hardwick, California, the daughter of Issei Chukuro and Kinko Tsubouchi...

, Bob Holt, Tress MacNeille

Tress MacNeille

Tress MacNeille is an American voice actress best known for providing various voices on the animated series The Simpsons, Futurama, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Disney's House of Mouse, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Rugrats, All Grown Up!, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, and Dave the...

, Tysun McMullan, Neil Ross

Neil Ross

Theodoric Neilson "Neil" Ross is an English voice actor and announcer, born in London, England and now resident and working in Los Angeles, in the United States. He has provided voices for in many American cartoons, particularly those based on Hasbro products and Marvel Comics, and numerous...

, John Stephenson

John Stephenson (actor)

John Stephenson is an American actor and voice actor. He has also been credited as John Stevenson...

, Janet Waldo

Janet Waldo

Janet Waldo is an American actress and voice artist with a career encompassing radio, television, animation and live-action films. She is best known in animation for voicing Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop and Josie McCoy in Josie and the Pussycats...

, and Alan Young

Alan Young

Alan Young is an English-Canadian actor and voice actor, best known for his role as Wilbur Post in the television series Mister Ed and as the voice of Scrooge McDuck in Disney films, TV series and video games...

External links