1.
I made this topper just for a tutorial purpose... If I were to do it for a cake I would make the whole figure on a cake dummy/piece of styrofoam and I would insert a barbecue skewer all the way down to the bottom of the styrofoam (lenght of skewer in the styrofoam = height of cake). As it goes for the element shown on the photo, I would place it on a cake just before putting the figure on the cake :)