I decided to call the "officisl" Rubik's online store, hessport.com, to get some details on the Revenge they were selling. This was not easy--the phone number on their site was incorrect, so I had to hunt doen someone in a different department and get a message relayed to the Rubik's shop. "What's the point?" I hear you cry. The president of the company called me back. As mentioned in a reply to my earlie rpost, the Revenge was an exclusive there, with 1,000 units ordered for Xmas '99. They sold through, but it took until March, so chances are the company won't be ordering any more. He did mention the next Rubik's puzzle, the Shell (which is shown at the Rubik's site), which Hessport will be getting in next month for exclusive sale before it goes retail next year. Seems to be a 2-level 3-D version of Rubik's Rings, but with 3 levels of difficulty based on pushing one or both of two buttons to limit the motion of the wheels. The downside to this is that the buttons are permanent locks.

I ended up caving and getting an old unused Revenge off of eBay. I'm playing with it, but get unnerved when a little plastic shaving comes out every so often. The last thing I want to do is ply it to death knowing another will probably cost more than $30.

FYI,
Jason