Negotiating a Deal Over a Tiny Puzzled Astronaut
Overview
Most of the negotiations I’ve sat through in my career involve spreadsheets, timelines, and a lot of very serious words. This one was over a tiny metal robot with a glass dome for a head. Same muscles, completely different energy, and honestly a lot more fun.
The brand is Mostarle. The product is the Nebula Astronaut, a 3D metal puzzle kit you build screw by screw with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, no glue involved. Once it’s together, a glass dome drops over the top and an LED base makes it look like there’s a swirling nebula trapped inside the astronaut’s helmet. It is, without question, one of the coolest small objects I’ve had on my desk.
The part nobody shows you
When people picture “brand deal,” they usually picture money changing hands and a script getting handed over. The actual process is a lot more back and forth than that. What’s the deliverable. What’s the timeline. What creative direction is on the table versus what’s locked. It’s a conversation, not a transaction, and the brands that get it right treat it like one.
What made this one easy was that there wasn’t much to fight about. Mostarle wanted a real build, filmed honestly, and I wanted to build the thing anyway. When the brief and your actual interest line up like that, the negotiation stops feeling like negotiation and starts feeling like planning a project with someone.
Why this one felt personal
I’ve been running @shelftherapystudio with my partner for a while now, mostly collectibles and unboxings. If you’ve seen that account, you know our shelf situation. We have a lot of Space Mollys. Enough that “just one more” stopped being a joke a long time ago.
So when a kit shows up that’s literally called the Nebula Astronaut, built from actual metal parts, with a helmet that glows like it’s got a piece of the galaxy trapped inside, that’s not a stretch for me to get excited about. That’s just Tuesday. The collector part of my brain and the creator part of my brain were both fully on board before I’d even opened the box.
Building it on camera
The actual filming was a jump cut build montage. Same framing every shot, hard cut every time a piece locked into place, screwdriver in one hand and pliers in the other. No script gymnastics needed because the object does the work. Watching something come together screw by screw is satisfying on its own, and the dome-and-light reveal at the end is the kind of shot that doesn’t need much help from editing.
The angle I leaned into was pretty simple. I spend my day job on screens. Building this pulled me off mine for a couple hours, one piece at a time, no notifications. That’s not a marketing line I invented, it’s genuinely what the build felt like.
What this whole process shows
Not every brand collaboration has to feel like an ad read. Some of them are just a chance to build something you’d want on your shelf anyway, get paid to do it properly, and hand a brand content that doesn’t feel like content. That’s the version of this job I like best, and this one was a good reminder of why I do it.
More of this kind of work lives on the UGC portfolio page, including the Nebula Astronaut piece itself.
Watch the build
View on Instagram