Three different
mechanical puzzles put out by the makers of
Rubik's Cube in the late
1980s.
Both consist of several square plastic plates with diagonal grooves on them, and a long plastic loop of string that runs in and out through the grooves on the various pieces. This allows pieces to flex in various ways, including the very surprising-to-the-eye effect of having two pieces be attached and able to act as if hinged on either of two different edges. The mechanism is a lot like the old Jacob's Ladder toy, but flexing in two dimensions instead of just one.
The original puzzle consists of 8 panels which are initially arranged in a rectangle and you have to move them into a bent-rectangle shape. The pictures on the panels show three unlinked rings in the starting configuration and three linked rings in the solution, thus symbolizing the old magic trick of linking the rings.
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The "master edition" puzzle consists of 12 panels in a rectangle which you need to move to a highly bent configuration, as shown below. This time the initial picture is of 5 linked rings, and the solution unlinks the rings. This was a disappointment to me in my youth, as I spent a good month or more to solve the basic puzzle, and the methods for the master puzzle were largely similar, so it took me only 2 days to solve the master puzzle.
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The third, rarest edition of Rubik's Magic is the "Create the Cube" edition. (I never owned one.) This is mechanically identical to the first edition with 8 panels, but instead of rings, each panel is divided into 4 small squares in 4 different colors.
The object is to form a cube with 6 of the tiles, with the remaining two tiles hinged together off one edge of the cube, forming a sort of base. The colors of all adjoining subsquares on the outside and top side of the base must match.