Robbie is asked, via long-distance telephone, by the father of the girl he's dating to pick up and deliver a birthday cake to the man's college daughter, far from her home in Chicago. Robbie obliges and even stays to light the candles and recite a simple little rhyme to the girl. He gets the notion that a lot of the college students in his school would love to have the same service performed for them and that he can make money off the deal.
When it is pointed out that most people don't know him and thus, they won't ask, he says he can go to the registrar and get the addresses and birthdates of everyone in the school. He plans to mail a flyer to each person's parents to drum up business.
Almost instantly his idea works, so well that he hires Chip and Ernie to help with deliveries. Then Uncle Charley volunteers to bake the cakes, so he can get a bit of spending money AND save Robbie lots of money buying from the bakery. Business grows so much that Robbie brings in several of Chip's friends and some of his to handle the office work and even Ernie is decorating all of the cakes.
The business overwhelms the house for a while. In fact, they are all so busy, they all forget that Steve's birthday is the 12th (of the unspoken month) and when he returns from his weeks-long trip to Washington, nobody mentions Dad's birthday-until they remember it too late that night, so they do it two days later.
The hustle of decorating and packaging all the cakes by the many workers winds up with some jostling and the boys all wind up in a classic cake and pie throwing free-for-all. Except for Steve, who is standing right next to Robbie when he gets his, everyone got into the act.
Now IMDB has a goof listed saying that when Ernie gets hit in the face, you can tell his glasses have no lenses. Reading that before watching, I watched closely. In the scene, there are a few times when you can see light glaring off of the lenses in his glasses. If you freeze the frame when they show his face after being hit, you can see some frosting ON the lens in front of his right eye. So that's a mistake.
Look for Little House's Mr. Oleson as the city health inspector. He wanted to inspect things, but was never seen causing trouble for Robbie, even though we surely saw several violations of the city code's for bakeries during the episode.
The cake and pie fight brought a crashing end to Robbie's business, which was consuming too much of everyone's time. Robbie's girlfriend even dumped him because he never had any time to spend with her.
Of course, the notion that he could obtain everyone's birth date and parents' addresses seems far-fetched even in 1966. I would imagine the majority of students would celebrate their birthdays on a weekend at home, or perhaps at the end of the semester with their families. But the notion seems plausible enough-except for how many orders he got in fewer than two weeks.
Overall a light-hearted episode finishing with some slapstick-unusual for this series. I gave it a 7.
When it is pointed out that most people don't know him and thus, they won't ask, he says he can go to the registrar and get the addresses and birthdates of everyone in the school. He plans to mail a flyer to each person's parents to drum up business.
Almost instantly his idea works, so well that he hires Chip and Ernie to help with deliveries. Then Uncle Charley volunteers to bake the cakes, so he can get a bit of spending money AND save Robbie lots of money buying from the bakery. Business grows so much that Robbie brings in several of Chip's friends and some of his to handle the office work and even Ernie is decorating all of the cakes.
The business overwhelms the house for a while. In fact, they are all so busy, they all forget that Steve's birthday is the 12th (of the unspoken month) and when he returns from his weeks-long trip to Washington, nobody mentions Dad's birthday-until they remember it too late that night, so they do it two days later.
The hustle of decorating and packaging all the cakes by the many workers winds up with some jostling and the boys all wind up in a classic cake and pie throwing free-for-all. Except for Steve, who is standing right next to Robbie when he gets his, everyone got into the act.
Now IMDB has a goof listed saying that when Ernie gets hit in the face, you can tell his glasses have no lenses. Reading that before watching, I watched closely. In the scene, there are a few times when you can see light glaring off of the lenses in his glasses. If you freeze the frame when they show his face after being hit, you can see some frosting ON the lens in front of his right eye. So that's a mistake.
Look for Little House's Mr. Oleson as the city health inspector. He wanted to inspect things, but was never seen causing trouble for Robbie, even though we surely saw several violations of the city code's for bakeries during the episode.
The cake and pie fight brought a crashing end to Robbie's business, which was consuming too much of everyone's time. Robbie's girlfriend even dumped him because he never had any time to spend with her.
Of course, the notion that he could obtain everyone's birth date and parents' addresses seems far-fetched even in 1966. I would imagine the majority of students would celebrate their birthdays on a weekend at home, or perhaps at the end of the semester with their families. But the notion seems plausible enough-except for how many orders he got in fewer than two weeks.
Overall a light-hearted episode finishing with some slapstick-unusual for this series. I gave it a 7.
