Thirty-nine years old. Who would have ever thought.

My Mom baked every one of my birthday cakes that I can remember. Thirty years ago today, she made this one for me:

“Happy Birthday, Robbie.” (That’s me.) By the nine candles on the cake I can tell you this was in 1982. The action figure on top of the cake is a Twin Pod Cloud Car Pilot from The Empire Strikes Back. The vehicle is a CAP-2 Captivator, a Star Wars “Mini Rig” — one of Kenner’s many “extended universe” (things that never appeared in the movies) items. As you can see from the box below, the CAP-2 was used by bounty hunters to capture Rebel scum. There’s really no reason a Twin Pod Cloud Car Pilot should be anywhere near a CAP-2, but somehow these two met on the planet of Chocolate Frostania, and the rest is history.

For what it’s worth, I still own both the CAP-2 and the Twin Pod Cloud Car Pilot. If the wind is just right, you can almost catch a whiff of that chocolate frosting …

(This is one of the rare occasions that I am cross-posting the same thing on robohara.com and retroist.com. Apologies for the double coverage.)