Seven Towns

My father, Tom Kremer, was born in Hungary. As he was Jewish, he was rounded up towards the end of the Second World War and taken to Bergen-Belsen. He escaped from the concentration camp with his whole family and eventually came to study philosophy in Edinburgh, where he met my mother.

When my mother was pregnant with me, he got a job working with children with special needs. He helped children who were antisocial interact with each other by inventing games for them. His boss encouraged him to licence these ideas to other educational establishments – and that was the start of Seven Towns.

My father was already an established toy inventor when he came across a peculiar object, which we now know as the Rubik’s Cube, being displayed by a Hungarian group at a toy fair in Nuremberg in 1979. He thought it was an intriguing object and acquired the rights to the puzzle. Staggeringly quickly, it became the best-selling toy of all time – over 300 million Rubik’s Cubes were sold over the next two years.

I have very happy memories of playing games around the kitchen table and testing out my father’s inventions. I feel lucky to be able to carry on his legacy.

Images courtesy David Kremer