I remember at CIII I literally felt sick to my stomach watching all of these people standing in line for hours upon hours simply buying merchandise, and how most of the panels were situated around some sort of merchandise and collecting.
Throughout that whole convention, I literally felt like I had wasted my entire childhood almost religiously devoted to something that in the end only boils down to this corporate monstrosity only turning out thousands of rabid 'collectors' only there to buy stuff and turn a profit on it later on ebay. Not to say that I don't have a good bit of collectibles, of course, but I dunno, I just felt somehow betrayed while I sat in my hotel room in Greenwood, Indiana after each day.
Only after watching the films a week or so later, after living in a funk, did I remember exactly why I spent so much of my early life enamored with Star Wars.