The easiest solution to the Rubik's Cube was to take it apart. A lot of 1980's kids learned a life lesson about taking short cuts, though - sometimes you couldn't put it back together again! Others found that removing all of the stickers and replacing them in the correct places was the best solution, although if you used this solution too many times, the stickers used to fall off.
A select few could solve the Rubik's Cube in the "proper" manner, and everyone knew at least one kid at school who could do it. Some enterprising young geniuses even used to charge a small fee for solving other people's hopelessly jumbled cubes!