Aaron Archer

Aaron draws a portrait of Batman for fans at BotCon 2005. LEGENDS OF BATMAN!

Aaron C. Archer (born August 26, 1972^[1]) is a former high-ranking employee of Hasbro.

Aaron's career was somewhat unusual insofar as he started out as a regular designer and eventually climbed up the corporate ladder.

As a designer, he first worked in Hasbro's Kenner division in 1995 after it was purchased by Hasbro a few years prior, working on toylines such as Batman, Star Wars and Jurassic Park, before being moved to Transformers during the Transmetal 2 phase of Beast Wars. There, he designed toys like the Transmetal 2 incarnations of Cheetor, Iguanus, Dinobot, Optimus Minor, and Megatron.

In the year 2000, the Kenner division was closed down and its product lines were fully merged into Hasbro. Many of the Kenner staff didn't want to relocate to Rhode Island, including the incumbent head of the Transformers brand, but Aaron was willing to move and, in his words, said "I raised my hand and said 'I'll take Transformers if you're looking for someone to manage it'".^[2] Aaron was promoted to lead designer on Transformers, where he played a large role in the planning of Armada, which was released in 2002. He played a similar role in the development of Energon and Cybertron, as well as Alternators. In addition to designing characters and planning out the toylines, Aaron also wrote the story concepts for all three Unicron Trilogy lines that were eventually made manifest in the lines' cartoon series ignored by the Japanese production companies. In the middle of all of this, in 2004, he was further promoted to design director.

In later years, he held titles such as "Snr. Design Director", "Director of Global Design and Development" (for the Transformers and G.I. Joe brands) and, finally, "Vice President of Intellectual Property Development". In 2013, he resigned from Hasbro for initially undisclosed reasons.^[3] He later confirmed that his main reason was the increasing difficulty of developing "fun" toys while dealing with rising plastic prices and the constant pressure for cost efficiency.^[4] After living for about a year in Morganton, North Carolina, where they operated their own art studio, he and his wife have since moved back to Rhode Island.^[5]

Stylistically, Archer's design work tended to prioritise play features, balanced against other considerations such as aesthetics and production realities.^[6] He identifies his own trademark signature, in contrast to fellow designer at the time Eric Siebenaler, as being a character having "a pointy jaw with goggles".^[7]

Aaron is relatively well known in the fandom, partially because he spent several months posting to the boards at TFW2005 under the username "Orson", a name by which fans sometimes still refer to him. This is in turn a reference to Orson Welles, the voice of Unicron in The Transformers: The Movie.

He now has a beard. And long hair. And a long forehead.

Known design projects

What's all this about? This article on a real person associated with the Transformers brand is a stub and is missing information. You can help Transformers Wiki by expanding it. What's needed: Everything between 2008 and 2012, design credits from Instagram, his podcast, toy and trivia sections across the wiki, etc etc

Beast Wars

Robots in Disguise (2001)

Commemorative Series

• Megatron (canceled G1 reissue/redeco)

Armada

Mini-Con 3-packs Street Action Mini-Con Team Many, many more he has not specified		Super-Con Class Blurr with Incinerator[8] Cyclonus with Crumplezone Demolishor with Blackout[8] / Powerlinx Demolishor with Powerlinx Blackout Hot Shot with Jolt		Optimus Prime with Over-Run Sideways with Mirror (Crosswise and Rook)[8] Smokescreen with Liftor Thrust with Inferno		Max-Con Class Red Alert with Longarm[8] Scavenger with Rollbar[8] Skywarp with Thunderclash[9] Starscream with Swindle		Max-Con Scavenger
Giga-Con Class Jetfire with Comettor[8] Megatron with Leader-1 (with Takashi Kunihiro)[10]		Super Base Class Optimus Prime with Sparkplug		Supreme Class Unicron with Dead End

Universe (2003)

Alternators

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Energon

Energon Class Battle Ravage[8] Signal Flare

Combat Class Sharkticon[8] Slugslinger[11] Snow Cat

Command Class Scorponok (early concept)

Combat Class Sharkticon

Cybertron

Beast Wars 10th Anniversary

Masterpiece

Transformers (2007)

Universe (2008)

Generations: Fall of Cybertron

(All with Takashi Kunihiro)^[10]

Deluxe Class Air Raid Impactor Kickback Roadbuster Sideswipe

Starscream Autobot Topspin Twintwist Ultra Magnus Autobot Whirl

Voyager Class Grimlock Soundwave with Laserbeak

Voyager Class Soundwave

Age of Extinction

Writing

• Energon Volume 4 (English edition)^[13]

Orson's World

Aaron Archer did not actually have a magnificent beard when this internet drama was going on. Perhaps if he had, it could have all been avoided.

In early 2002, prior to the official launch of the Armada line, Aaron signed up to the boards of TFW2005 (then merged with the late Transfandom.net, later Transfandom.com) under the alias "Orson". After refuting a fan's pompous claims about the alleged properties of some of the Armada toys, the staff verified his identity as a Hasbro designer and created a special sub-forum for him, named "Orson's World". There, he would answer fan questions, but often only giving very vague hints or rejecting a carefully phrased, multi-point question with a blunt "NO." When the 2005 Boards split from Transfandom, "Orson's World" was migrated to the new TFW2005 site with Aaron's approval. As for whether the higher-ups at Hasbro themselves were fine with the posts, Archer simply said that he had "enough approval" from them.^[14]

Aaron's stint as "Orson" eventually came to a sudden halt in September 2003, when he was asked by his superiors to refrain from any further posts at TFW2005 and have his "Orson" account as well as his entire posting history deleted. Aaron initially blamed Jack, the owner of TFormers.com, another fansite, for sending a "sour grape email" to his PR department.^[15] Jack initially denied any involvement and threatened legal action for defamation of name, but later endorsed the termination of "Orson's World", without directly claiming responsibility: Allegedly, Aaron, in his "Orson" persona, had been behaving "unprofessionally", had been "rude" towards fans^[16] and allegedly secretly supplied TFW2005 with photos of prototypes, thereby undermining a strict ban on photos of prototypes Hasbro had been enforcing for the better part of 2003. Other suspects blamed by "inside sources" were the staff of other fansites such as Seibertron.com, The Allspark (who later went on record several times denying any involvement, even explicitly mourning the loss of "Orson's World") and the owners of the late Transfandom.net/Transfandom.com, the latter of whom had allegedly phoned Hasbro and literally insulted their PR contact.^[17]

The true details of the goings-on behind the scenes that had led to the end of "Orson's World" will probably never be revealed in full. Which is probably for the better.

Convention appearances

Fiction

Lil' Jerry

Aaron Archer and Lil' Jerry answered fans' questions at BotCon 2005. Lil' Jerry's Big BotCon Adventure

Notes

"Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants."

• After joining Kenner in his early 20s, Aaron's first toy that made it to production was Lightwing Batman for the Batman Forever toyline.
• Aaron's favorite Transformer toy during the original run was Perceptor. However, he felt Perceptor never got enough screen/panel time, which he attributes to the fact Perceptor turned into a difficult-to-utilize alternate form.^[18]
• His favorite Transformer that he designed is Vector Prime.^[19]
• His favorite weapon concept is Armada Starscream's transforming wing/sword.^[20]
• When asked about his favorite Mini-Con, he cited Thunderclash, but said that he liked different ones for different reasons.^[21]
• Aaron claims credit for naming the Armada Requiem Blaster, and thinks it is both his greatest and his dumbest name for a kids toy ever.^[22]
• Armada Optimus Prime was the only Optimus design by Aaron Archer, as his style wasn't suited to heroic characters.^[23]
• The G.I. Joe Snow Job figure was the first toy Archer bought with his own money, and this, together with the Snow Cat vehicle, formed the inspiration for Energon Snow Cat.^[24]
• Archer wrote all the English dialogue for the Energon mini-comic Volume 4 based solely on the artwork, as no translation from the original Japanese was provided.^[13]
• When the Energon Piranhacons (who would eventually become the Transformers Collectors' Club Seacons) were first introduced in a Hasbro panel at OTFCC 2004, Skalor was labelled "Archerbot" after Aaron as a joke, as Skalor's name had not yet cleared Hasbro Legal.
• Protoform Optimus Prime was designed by Archer in a single day in 2006, and was the last toy he personally worked on. He prefers the redeco from The Last Knight.^[25]
• Movie Longarm has an Orson's Towing logo on his door panels, a somewhat obscure nod to Archer.
• Aaron's name and likeness are the basis for the Transformers Animated character Angry Archer. He was unaware of the character until fairly late in production, but went along with the idea when the Cartoon Network team agreed to give him a "robot arm" to fit into the future setting more and made him left handed (Archer is left handed).
• The Archers used a Japanese convention exclusive Movie Arcee and one-of-a-kind variants of Movie Voyager Optimus Prime and Armada Sparkplug as cake toppers at their wedding. Rik Alvarez officiated.^[26]
• At the BotCon 2008 Hasbro panel, Archer revealed that he was unable to find the Wal-Mart-exclusive Masterpiece Starscream at Wal-Mart retail stores. He was forced to purchase one off eBay.
• Archer was featured on Shout! Factory's G1 Bonus Features "Triple Changer: From Toy to Comic to Screen", "The Combiner: Forming the Transformers Animated Series" and "The Autobots, the Decepticons & the Fans". He was also featured on Shout! Factory's Beast Wars Bonus Features "Maximize! Creating A New Breed Of Transformer" and "Remembering the Spark".
• One of the last toys Aaron Archer had any input on was the Age of Extinction Flip & Change Grimlock toy, as he challenged the team to develop a toy of the character which could transform using that specific motion.^[27]
• At his BotCon 2016 panel, he claimed to have designed more Jar Jar toys than anyone else.
• He continues to draw updated versions of Unicron Trilogy characters (usually from Armada) and often uploads pictures of them to his Instagram account, sometimes with a little bit of background information as to where the inspirations for the designs originally came from.

External links

• Aaron Archer's professional website
• Aaron Archer on Instagram
• Aaron Archer on Twitter
• Aaron Archer on Facebook
• The Toy Armada with Aaron Archer, Archer's podcast

Interviews

Proof that Archer is fluent in Japanese?

• March 2003—TFormers (at the Hasbro Collectors Event)
• July 2007—CantonRep.com (archived)
• 2007—FieldsEdge.com (archive)
• July 2012—Seibertron (transcript) (with Jerry Jivoin)
• July 2014—TFcon Toronto
• July 2014—Vangelus
• October 2014—TransMissions
• October 2014—Transformers For Your Listening Pleasure (with Rik Alvarez)
• March 2020—First Comics News
• March 2020—Radio Free Cybertron
• December 2021—The Toy Armada (Armada Part 1, Armada Part 2)
• June 2022—Transformers Slag Podcast
• June 2022—The Toy Armada (Alternators)
• September 2022—The Toy Armada (Armada Deep Toy / Character Review Part 1, Part 2)

References