I have a special interesting products that transcend generations, and none has done it quite like the Rubik’s Cube.

This simple, “low-tech” object celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. The sales figures are mind-blowing: roughly 500 million units sold worldwide, making it the bestselling toy ever.

And maybe even the bestselling product of all time, according to the data I’ve seen.

Think about that for a sec. Half a billion cubes, spinning and clicking in hands around the globe, for five decades.

What makes this particularly remarkable (beyond being a record-smashing product) is its inherent DIFFICULTY.

The Rubik’s Cube isn’t easy — it’s frustrating, time-consuming, and for most people, seemingly impossible to solve.

By conventional product wisdom, it should have failed.

Most product makers rush to remove friction.

We smooth the path. We aim for instant gratification. We assume that if something is hard to use, customers will abandon it.

The Cube defies this logic completely.

Only 5.8% of people can actually solve it. That means most owners never do!

As its inventor, Hungarian architecture professor Erno Rubik, noted in his 2020 book Cubed: “It is a curious fact — one that surprises me as much as anyone — that for so many decades, during a time of an unprecedented technology revolution, fascination with such a simple, ‘low-tech’ object has survived.”

Even the inventor’s mind is blown.

In I Need That, I talk about the powerful “Coveted Condition” that drives product obsession — that future state buyers imagine achieving through ownership. With the Rubik’s Cube, the Coveted Condition is NOT having a solved puzzle; it’s becoming the kind of person who can solve it.

The difficulty isn’t a bug—it’s the feature.

Product Payoff: While Wordle is relatively simple, its creator Josh Wardle (funny, I didn’t know this until researching the game just now) deliberately built in pushback through its once-daily play limit. This artificial scarcity and challenge created the perfect social currency — something worth sharing because it’s not easily achieved. This counterintuitive approach led to explosive growth from 90 daily players to millions within months, ultimately selling to The New York Times for a reported seven-figure sum.

Action for today: Think about where you might be over-simplifying your product. Is there an opportunity to introduce a purposeful challenge that creates a sense of achievement? What if the “work” required to master your product is actually part of its appeal rather than something to eliminate?

Want to explore how the right kind of strategic friction might actually enhance your product’s appeal? Tap that tricky reply arrow and let’s discuss how challenging elements might increase rather than decrease your product’s value. Or reach out to my team of product marketing experts at Graphos Product.