Aaron Archer
Aaron Archer is the Design Director for the Transformers and G.I. Joe brands at Hasbro.
He first worked on lines such as Batman 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 Aaron was promoted to lead designer on the Transformers brand, 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. As well as 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.
Aaron is relatively well-known in the fandom, partially because he spent several months posting to the boards at TFW2005 under the name "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.
Armada
Energon
- Signal Flare
- Early Scorponok concept
Trivia
- 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.
- Movie Longarm has an Orson's Towing logo on his door panels, a somewhat obscure nod to Archer.
- 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.
