World's smallest Rubik's Cube is only 0.19 inches wide, but will cost you a bomb

The world's smallest Rubik's Cube is now available to order. It is not merely a showpiece but you can actually solve it. Produced by Japanese toy maker MegaHouse, the puzzle is fully functional, but you might need a pair of tweezers to move it around.

The six-sided puzzle cube can fit under a fingernail, yet it carries a hefty price tag.

You will have to dole out $5,320 to own one and the pre-orders have opened. The manufacturer’s website started taking orders on Thursday and is expected to deliver next April.

Along with the puzzle cube, you will also get a stand declaring it the "World’s record smallest Rubik’s Cube."

The latest Rubik's Cube entered the Guinness World Records in August when it was officially confirmed to be the world’s "smallest rotating puzzle cube". The miniature puzzle is about 1,000th of the size of the original.

Made of aluminium, the Rubik’s Cube weighs 0.33 grams, and measures at 0.19 inches wide, 0.19 inches tall and 0.19 inches long. It’s about 0.2 inches across.

A specialised company was used for precision cutting work.

“The 5-millimetre Rubik’s Cube is the result of the trinity of machines, cutting tools and players’ passion,” Kiyokazu Saito, president of Iriso Precision, the company used for the precision cutting, said in a video on the MegaHouse website.

The concept for the small cube started being worked on four years ago, while the process of production started in 2022, according to CNN.

History ofRubik’s Cube

Notably, the original Rubik’s Cube recently had its 50th anniversary. It was made by a young professor, Ernő Rubik, in Budapest, Hungary who created the prototype of his "Magic Cube."

Rubik was a teacher at the Department of Interior Design and loved geometry. He had been working to create a solid, 3D structure with movable and interchangeable layers, but failed to succeed initially.

However, he did not lose hope and continued to work on it. "I just made it for my own curiosity,” he told The New York Post. "I suppose it’s like being an artist. If you’re happy with your creation, you want to show people. You want it to be liked.”

Within just two years of going on sale in Hungary, the then-Magic Cube had sold 300,000 units. International toymakers took notice and American company Ideal Toy bought the rights to the Magic Cube in 1980. It was renamed "Rubik’s Cube", and from there the sales just went berserk.