The orgin of this conversation was that there were loyal fans who remained loyal to SW straight on through, who George did not remain loyal too. It kind of veered off into a whole differerent and irrelevant discussion that seems to have more to do with perspective than anything else.
Baron said "there's no doubt it died hard around 1985 in a way that hasn't happened this time around"
Why is there no doubt? I really never saw it as dead during that period of time. We still had video games and comics being produced along with a few other odds and ins. I don't think a market flooded with merchandise is a fair assessment of whether something is a dead fad or something with an authentic massive fan base that still very much care about it at any given moment.
And I really don't think there is much evidence that the "New-Star Wars" crowd is clinging too it more tightly than we did. I see it more as Star Wars is clinging to them, and fortunately for it, only very slowly wearing out its welcome. I mean, there was a Star Wars film in theaters just this year, and now a TV show, had an animated feature film been in theaters in 1988, you can bet it would have reawaken the fad crowd. Also, in this day and age we are in an even more material driven society than we were back in the seventies and eighties. Now everything gets tons of merchandising.
Had Star Wars really been dead, it would have taken a lot more than a small line of action figures and a few new novels in the early to mid nineties to revive it. Instead, those figures and novels fell right into the eager hands of fans who had been waiting for them. Games like X-Wing, Dark Forces, and Rebel Assault sold amazingly well, because not only were they good games, but there were still more than enough people interested in Star Wars to make it worthwhile to keep producing them. If that counts as dead, then check my pulse, I may have been gone for quite some time now.