I had already pretty much checked out after the prequels, for several years. I barely gave a second thought to Star Wars and I’m not sure I watched any of the movies in their entirety for the better part of a decade from 2005 to 2015. Obviously I didn’t like the prequels and I was so put off by the changes to the originals that I never even finished watching the DVDs I bought in 2004 and didn’t even get the Blu-rays for a long while. I didn’t know about Despecialized or even the GOUT, and had no desire to dig out old VHS tapes, so Star Wars was basically dead to me for quite some time.
Then the hype around TFA “awakened” my dormant interest in the series… and lead me to discovering Despecialized and all of a sudden I remembered why I loved Star Wars so much as a kid. It really was like R2 lighting up at the end of TFA. So I’ve maintained my renewed interest in the franchise in the two years since.
This for me also (slightly abridged version of your post!).