It is possible to find sources of painted 1/4" wooden cubes in a variety of colors if one looks at the European markets. And it is certainly possible to find sources of unfinished 1/4" wooden cubes in the U.S.
But does anyone know of a producer -- or even a source in general -- of bulk painted wooden cubes in the U.S. or Canada? By bulk, I mean thousands of cubes, not just a couple dozen or so per color.
It sounds like you know exactly what you want and have already looked around to find it, but just in case you haven't...
One place to try might be educational supply companies, who provide "manipulatives". I found these plastic cubes that might fit your bill, for instance:
http://www.eaieducation.com/PDF/Fall2002/Cubes.pdf
The problem is that the wood cubes are either too big, or the prices are too outrageous. It's not hard to find 100 or a couple hundred cubes for $20, but that's not even close to feasible for production, which it sounds like you're at.
Yet, there must be someone who is supplying these cubes to the educational supply companies. And if someone could find who that someone is, then they might be able to supply cubes to us designers, as well.
Good luck!
-Jeff
Might not exactly fit the bill ... but I found a 1,000 1cm cubes in six colors for $26.50 here: http://www.enasco.com/prod/ProductDetail?sku=TB15524T&title=
(Special thanks to Clark Rodeffer for point out the enasco site to me a couple weeks back. ;) )
-Bryk
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These leads do help. Unfortunately, 1 cm (3/8") seems to be a standard and I'd really like to use 6mm (1/4"). Still, if I can find the 3/8" cubes at a sufficiently low price, I may rethink this issue!
(BTW, for others looking at 1cm plastic cubes, another seller may be found at http://www.highhopes.com/safe-t33.html .)