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Ultimate RD Shell by Takamiz Usui & Henry Harrius
Henry Harrius is at the top of the ladder when it comes to innovative Rubik’s Cube magic. He constantly creates practical solutions to make cube magic more accessible, more deceptive, and/or more visual. He also makes the RD Cube, which is my preferred cube for Rubik’s Cube Magic. I like his cubes because they move smoothly, you can easily control the tension, they look like the recognizable “Rubik’s Cube,” and there is no logo on the white center square.
His newest release is a Rubik’s Cube shell. That may not sound that new and innovative, but this shell folds flat, which allows you to have the shell in a flat paper bag before you begin the routine. It's based on a design by Takamiz Usui, who is genuinely one of the most influential Rubik's Cube magicians. The shell is also a full shell with 6 sides.
You get a gimmicked (magnetic) Rubik’s Cube, the shell that folds flat, enough stickers to replace those on the shell a couple of times, and a tutorial that covers everything. The tutorial is shot very well and is easy to follow. The routines provided use the shell as a way to take a cube from mixed to solved. My favorite one taught is a Do As I Do type routine where you and a spectator both solve a mixed cube. Here's a video performance of that in case you're curious.
But that’s not the routine I’m going to be using this for (more on that later.) The tutorial also teaches Takamiz Usui’s method of using this shell to make the Rubik’s Cube change into a solid color cube, which he performed on Fool Us.
The cube is great, as you’d expect, since it’s an RD Cube. The shell itself is great quality. One thing to be aware of is that the shelled cube is slightly larger than a regular cube. It’s a big enough difference that you should avoid holding the shelled cube right beside a regular cube. From the stage, the difference is probably invisible, but up close, it’s noticeable enough to want to avoid a direct comparison. The spectators can’t handle the cube in its shelled state because it can’t rotate or anything, however, the shell is magnetically attached to the cube inside so it can be tossed in the air, rolled on the table, spun in the fingers, and all the other things you may do to show the “singularity” of the cube.
The real question you have to ask yourself is whether or not the ability to fold the cube flat is worth it as a convincer. The goal of it folding flat is to eliminate the idea that there’s a cube inside the bag beforehand. This can be helpful, but in a lot of Rubik’s Cube routines with a bag, the bag already being open allows for a “sucker” moment where they think you’ve just swapped cubes in the bag. You lose that sucker moment with this, but I think that moment only exists in so many bagged cube routines because of the necessity to begin with a bag that’s open and containing a cube. It all just depends on what you want. Honestly, for stage performers, I don’t know if this is worth it for the subtlety. You have to be a little too overt about the bag being flat. In Henry’s Do As I Do routine above, there’s even a moment where the performer and spectator slap the bag between their hands to show it’s flat. It does the job of cementing the moment of the bag being flat in their memory, but it feels a little unnatural and puts a little too much emphasis on the bag.
The way I will be using this is with The Jerx’s “World’s Greatest Coincidence” routine from his latest book. I won’t get into details here, but using this shell makes the routine worse in some ways because instead of all normal cubes, now you end with one gimmicked cube, but the advantage is that both cubes can be genuinely mixed by one or more spectators. If you do Andy’s routine one-on-one, his method is great. But if there is even just one other person present, I think it feels a little awkward to NOT hand both cubes to both spectators to mix at the same time.
To do that routine (which is a cube matching effect), I had to re-sticker the shell. That was a little annoying, but not too difficult to do, and only took about 10 minutes.
Here’s the whole reason I got this: having one flat bag is fine as a subtlety that there’s nothing inside, but what I’ve done is put that flat bag with the shell inside back into the plastic package of paper bags and stuffed them in a cabinet. I start the routine by having them mix both cubes, and then I remember that I need something to put a cube in. I go on a bit of a wild goose hunt trying to find something to put it in. Eventually, I “find” the pack of paper bags in the back of a cabinet and bring them over to where we’re sitting. I take out one bag, open it up, pop their mixed cube in, and little do they know, their cube now matches my pattern. I think this entire setup is incredibly disarming. Even though the cube is gimmicked at the end, they have mixed it themselves, so they should have absolutely no reason to suspect a switch of the cube. This particular use is where this flat shell really shines IMO.
You can pick up the Ultimate RD Shell for $140 here:
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