Toy Story
Canton native Aaron Archer says the toy industry is like the fashion industry.
“Every year or year and a half you want to refresh it, bring newness to it to invigorate the imagination of play,” he says.
He should know. From January 1995 until May 2013, Archer worked as a toy designer for Hasbro, developing toy lines from popular movies and TV series like “G.I. Joe,” “Batman” and “Star Wars: Episode I.” Now, he does part-time freelance illustrating and toy strategizing projects for various companies while raising his young family in Canton.
One of his most recognizable toy lines is the Transformers brand, which he helped refresh from the original 1980s film and TV show for the 2007 movie reboot and its subsequent sequels. The latest installment, “Bumblebee,” is in theaters Dec. 21.
“The biggest thing between the ‘80s and now is the technology to create a dynamic posable robot [with] ball joints so you can put them in very intricate poses; they’re more humanoid characters,” he says.
As a kid, Archer watched the original “Transformers” series and loved “G.I. Joe” cartoons, toys and comic books. He exhibited artistic sensibilities early on. “I don’t think I was very good at coloring in the lines, so I often just drew my own stuff,” he recalls.
He also found creative inspiration in the sensational paperback covers of Western, spy and secret-agent novels his father voraciously read. “The most memorable were ‘The Destroyer’ Remo Williams [book] series that had explosions, scary dudes with guns, exotic animals [that] told a story on the cover,” he recalls. “I enjoyed the colors and the dynamic expression of conflict.”
While studying art at The University of Akron, Archer fell in with Jeff McCormack, a like-minded guy who helped him develop his artistic skills. They ended up self-publishing two issues of a sci-fi-fantasy comic book called “Gumbo” together.
His experience in crafting the comic book, along with the skills he learned in college in 3D efforts like sculpture and ceramics, ultimately prepared him for the opportunity of a lifetime.
“I like to say I got drafted out of college, like a basketball player,” he says. He left college after being interviewed for a job with Kenner, a subsidiary of Hasbro in Cincinnati — where others from his circle already had jobs.
“I was brought in because of my comic book and creative mind point of view,” he says. With a firm grasp on pop-culture references and a ready supply of ideas for costumes and characters, Archer was not the typical industrial designer, and that served him well, despite a learning curve. “I had to learn on the job about plastics manufacturing and technical drawing to be a fully functional [toy] designer.”
His time in college helped him develop the technical skills to work on toys for the 1997 “Batman & Robin” movie, for which he traveled to Hollywood and met director Joel Shumacher.
“It was wild to be a very small part of the Batman machine of the ‘90s,” Archer says. “I could walk around the art department and see Batmobile concepts, prop weapons, costume designs. I made a few friends that I would see again 10 years later in the Transformers art department.”
Archer’s stepping stone between the Batman line and the Transformers brand was working on “Star Wars: Episode I” toys. Then in 2000, Archer relocated to Hasbro’s main headquarters in Rhode Island and was named Hasbro’s representative with Takara, the Japanese company with which Hasbro co-develops the Transformers brand. For 13 years, Archer worked on everything from storylines and character names to costume design and color schemes, then collaborated with the comic book, video game and animation companies.
“The vehicle type helped define the type of character,” he says. “For instance, military vehicles usually became tough soldier types, whereas commercial vehicles were more heroic. We would then name the character and pick colors to accentuate the character’s personality and storyline.”
Archer helped revive Bumblebee from a decade-long absence for the 2007 Transformers film and again for the sequels. “We had to reinterpret him in a modern way,” he says.
While Transformers are marketed primarily as toys for boys, Archer thinks Bumblebee may begin to challenge that idea. With young actress Hailee Steinfeld in the lead role and this Autobot transforming into a sweet, nonthreatening VW Beetle, the “Bumblebee” film seems to embrace our era’s shift in gender attitudes.
“It is natural that Bumblebee can open new possibilities beyond only one type of audience,” Archer says. “Transformers is about great conversion play and gaining a mastery of change that everyone is interested in.”