Aaron Archer

Aaron C. Archer (born 1972 in Canton, Ohio) is a toy designer for the Hasbro toy company from 1995 onwards. Archer has worked on toy lines including Batman, Star Wars, and Alien: Resurrection, amongst others. Archer's earliest Transformers work were designs for the later Beast Wars toys, including Transmetal 2 Megatron, Dinobot, and Cheetor. Currently Archer is the design director on the Transformers brand, a role that essentially makes him the highest-ranking Transformers staffer on the Hasbro side of the business (Transformers are produced in partnership with Takara).

Archer manages a design team that is responsible for concept design, both for larger storyline concepts (Archer claims the idea for Transformers: Cybertron was initially created on a Taco Bell napkin over lunch) and for the look of individual characters. While Takara's engineers are responsible for converting Hasbro designs into three-dimensional action figure form. Takara/Tomy also has say in design choices.

Archer is also well-known in the Transformers fandom for his brief stint posting on the TFW2005 boards under the assumed name "Orson" (a reference to Orson Welles, voice of Unicron). Archer responded to fan questions in an unusually cryptic style, answering either-or type questions with a straightforward "NO" and only answering specific parts of multi-part questions (most likely due to non-disclosure issues). The "Orson's World" message board was eventually shut down by Hasbro and issued a statement that they wanted to treat all fansites fairly.1

Prior to working for Hasbro, Archer self-published a comic book, Gumbo, with Jeff McCormack. Both attended the University of Akron, in Akron, Ohio.