Darn! Now the film is wrecked for me!
I have to thank you for this giant insight into how the plot is completely sidetracked by this obvious anachronism.
Thanks for being there for us all.
The pumps don't work 'cause the Vandals stole the handles
Bob Dylan

In the UK cheap copies of the cube were available in the 70's. I left my Junior school in 1979 aged 11. I can't be sure what year it was, but sometime before January 1978 I had worked out a way of always solving the cube and done so before my classmates in 28 seconds. Just because official versions weren't available doesn't mean that people weren't aware of them.

Yeah, the movie about a 20 foot alien building a ship out of metallic objects was completely unbelievable BECAUSE of a rubik's cube, ruined the whole thing.
"We stayed up all night dry humping, it was awful, I think she gave me poison ivy."

since when is dayton ohio considered a small town?

Note: You can be aware of the existence of something without having to own that something. So how exactly is it "wrong" for them to know about something that was invented 5 years previous, even if it wasn't licensed for sale?
Also, living in a small town doesn't make them completely ignorant of the world.
Prof. Farnsworth: Oh. A lesson in not changing history from Mr. I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!

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I enjoyed the movie.
I don't love her.. She kicked me in the face!!

Wow, an anachronism in a movie? WHAT THE beep?!

Amen! ( Yeah, who really gives a ?)

This entire thread should be called "The Hair-Splitters Debate Club".

I think the filmmakers took liberties with the Rubik's scene as so few people in the west had heard of them until 1980!
Its that man again!!

that's nothing compares to many other flaws in the script:

• the doctor is still alive after that terrible crash!!!
• the creature seems big (when shot in the end) but it fits into the bus!
• no one noticed the car full of kids that got away from the evacuation area (and later on was driving in the war zone)!
• no one seems to explain how the kids went directly to the cemetery and no one noticed that "something" is digging a huge hole there!
  I think the movie was enjoyable, but the script was kind of weak! And there were a lot of good solutions

Microwave ovens "Radar Ranges", were first available in the LATE 40s. They were very expensive used commercially.
I was born in 1955. I also worked for a film company. BUT I'll be damned if that makes me an expert on WHEN the Rubik's Cube came out. Anyone with any credentials or without any, can be right or wrong!
Bluemeenie you get more arrogant and pompous with every post.

There were microwaves and handheld games in the late 70's. Not sure how widespread they were.

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I was thinking sort of the same thing. I was confused as to the years the movie took place. Things that threw me were the microwaves, and the handheld video football game. I was born in 1975 and grew up a middle class neighborhood in a small town. It took until the late 80's for microwaves, walkmans, handheld video games to become widespread.