Rory’s Story equals imagination and fun cubed

ONE of the most successful Irish toys developed over the past few years is Rory’s Story Cubes, a game of imagination and fun that encourages users to make up a story based on the throw of the dice.

Ryan Tubridy described it as one of his favourites on last year’s Late Late Toy Show and in the past year alone it has won the Best Game in the Toy Shop UK Independent Toy Awards. It has also been nominated in the Game of the Year category of the 2012 Toy of the Year Awards the “Oscars” of the North American toy industry.

Invented by Dubliner Rory O’Connor and developed in partnership with Anita Murphy, from Co Kildare, as a problem-solving tool for business, the game has been in gestation since 2004 and was originally based on the famous Rubik Cube.

“We tried to get a licence for the Rubik Cube but they were not interested,” explains Anita, “so we had to have a re-think and use some creative thinking to get around that problem.”

The answer was to open up the cube into its component parts, and so, after many trials, the nine, six-sided cubes that are Rory’s Story Cubes eventually came into being.

Company headquarters are in Belfast and the business is booming, says Anita. “We started off producing 500 games, then it went to 1,200, 10,000 and this year we sold 150,000, so it’s gone viral.” The product sells particularly well over the internet and is currently No 1 in the toy category on Amazon.com in the United States.

“The best thing about it is that people are using it first and foremost for fun,” says Rory. “It brings people together to share the magical creation of a story that didn’t exist before the roll.”