A Hungarian architecture professor's teaching aid became the fastest-selling toy in the world.
Everyone had one, almost nobody solved one, and the standard solution in every British household was to prise off the coloured stickers and reapply them.
The taking-apart-and-reassembling method was considered marginally more honourable. It was not.
Cost back then
£3.99
Goes for now
£5 new; original 1980 boxed cubes £40+
Keep going
Mattel's line of chunky figures, sold alongside a cartoon that existed mainly to advertise them.
The freezer centre was a whole shop of frozen food, and going there meant a chest freezer in the garage.
Sony's superior video format lost the war to VHS, leaving a small number of very smug and very stranded households.
A cassette player with headphones and no speaker, which sounded absurd until everybody had one.