Universal Favourite builds a cute, cosmic brand world for Butter Baby

When a butter-based alien character crash-lands in Jakarta with a mission to save his home planet, the challenge isn’t just creating a cute mascot. It’s building an entire universe that can sustain a brand across retail, entertainment and global markets. Butter Baby arrived at Universal Favourite as a seed concept – a character from the paradise planet Butterlandia who travels through space searching for butter to save his dying world. He discovers Earth, rich with the precious resource, and decides to stay, opening a humble dessert shop in Blok M, Jakarta, where he shares traditional Butterlandian treats with curious humans, or as he calls them, ‘humblabubs.’ The Australian studio's brief extended far beyond identity work. “The client came to us with the start of an idea, a butter-based character and a story they’d been developing for a few years,” explains Dari Israelstam, Founder & Executive Creative Director at Universal Favourite. “Our brief was to take that narrative and turn it into a full brand world, shaping Butter Baby into a three-dimensional character and building the visual and verbal system around him.” The character’s backstory draws from unexpected ancient mythology. Butter Baby’s creators found inspiration in Sumerian tablets describing the Anunnaki, beings from the planet Nibiru who came to Earth 350,000 years ago searching for gold to save their atmosphere. “We loved that origin story and decided to give it a fun twist,” they reveal. “Instead of searching for gold, our aliens come for ‘liquid gold’ – butter.” This narrative foundation informed every design decision. Butter Baby needed to function not just as a digital mascot, but as a physical presence in stores, a wearable suit for appearances, and across merchandise. His defining features – the butter whip, starburnt cheeks and expressive face – emerged through extensive iteration. “From the start we knew that he had to be out-of-this-world levels of cute, with details that would make him super distinctive,” notes Creative Director Ali Ozden. Working with Double Up Studio, the team ensured the character looked compelling from every angle and was properly rigged for animation across platforms.