As far as I remember, it all started with a comment from an interview with George Lucas in which he reiterated the OOT would technically not exist to him anymore and that the statement (for the last time on home video) back in '95 was in fact not a Lucasfilm marketing hoax. It was a pretty exciting time for me to see how many other people shared my preference of the original threatrical cuts (and back then I did not really think we'd see any kind of release anytime soon).
