Rubik the Amazing Cube was a 1983 Ruby-Spears animated series based on... well... the then extremely popular Rubik's Cube puzzle toy. In this short-lived series, a trio of Latino siblings (Carlos, Lisa, and Reynaldo Rodriguez) are casually walking around a forest at night, and happen to witness a strange gypsy/magician-type character going at top speed in a horse-drawn cart. A strange object falls out of the cart, which looks like a Rubik's Cube. One of the kids picks it up and solves it, and lo and behold, the thing comes to life, complete with a face and legs. He calls himself Rubik, and immediately bonds with the kids, who soon have wacky misadventures with the eponymous cube.
Tropes:
- Animorphism: A common plot device. Rubik turns Carlos into a werewolf (after turning him briefly into a mummy and a sasquatch) as a practical joke in "Back Packin' Rubik", he turns Carlos into a poodle to hide from a pair of dognappers in "Rubik and the Pooch-nappers" (and later in the same episode, Rubik turns the villains themselves into cats), and he turns Carlos and Lisa into mice to infiltrate a giant's castle via mousehole in "Rubik in Wonderland". That doesn't include all the times where the kids are just shrunk, which was even more common.
- Fad Super: The title character is based off the Rubik's Cube puzzle that was extremely popular in the 1980s.
- Interspecies Romance: In one episode, Rubik turns Carlos into a dog as a disguise. Thing is, he gets turned into, in his own words, "a girl poodle". And his own dog (also in the hands of the dognappers) becomes very fond of "her", which he takes full advantage of (because his dog had scrambled and buried Rubik, and Carlos couldn't change back until he found and solved him).
- Living Toys: The title character is a talking Rubik's Cube puzzle.
- No Ontological Inertia: Averted. While Rubik is powerless when scrambled, any spells he had in effect stay in effect (often to the detriment of the kids who had to solve him).
- Once an Episode: Whenever Rubik gets bumped too hard, his cube jumbles up, trapping him inside and forcing one of the kids (usually Carlos) to solve the cube to free him. (Usually with some added complication, from having to solve the cube while hanging upside down above an eagle's nest, to trying to solve it while being dragged along a raging river towards a waterfall, to having to do it without thumbs due to being turned into a dog in an unusual aversion of Feather Fingers).
- Weaksauce Weakness: Rubik can do anything... as long as he's solved. But the slightest jostle scrambles him.
