Well, I'd only actually been a fan of Star Wars for about a year before the Special Editions came out, but I was already fairly entrenched by that point into the Star Wars mythos. I admit I was very excited, especially to be able to see the movies on the big screen. That overshadowed the point that things were changed. I never thought of them, though, as recreations or replacements of the Star Wars films, just this nice little bonus thing. And I assumed that, after 1997, they'd go away. I remember my friend had just gotten into Star Wars, and he was buying up the action figures. I tried to persuade him not to, because, in response to the SE release, they had changed the packaging from the blue/silver Star Wars logo on orange to this nasty-looking green on green thing. So I tried to convince him to wait until 1998 to buy figures, because I assumed that, once the year had passed, they'd revert to the old style again. I was wrong. I was eleven, give me a break. But I never stopped watching my Faces set. Like I said, I considered the SE an alternate "special" version of Star Wars. It didn't take the place of it. So while my friends threw away their old movies, I held onto them for dear life. I remember I did get excited when I realized that the "One Last Time..." tagline of the Faces set must mean that the SEs would come to video, so I could add them to my collection. This was before I knew anything about aspect ratios or the fact that VHS tape could wear out and wasn't nearly the quality of film.

For all the horrible things that have come out of the SE, I do feel grateful for the experience to get to watch them on the big screen, having been too young to catch them the first time. I'll never forget it.