SilverWook said:

I'd like to think George respects Frank Oz too much to do that to Original Puppet Yoda (tm).

Love the wizard of Oz, but Stuart Freeborn deserves a great deal of credit too. and I can totally see lucas personally no longer caring about his contributions. All the apologists and sycophants will say "well, yoda was lucas' creation, stuart freeborn was just realizing his vision!!!!!!!!!!" - which of course is totally bogus. Like every one else, he went far above and beyond the call of duty.

Bill Hunts story, im not so sure how much I believe - especially the part that they decided against it because the cgi dind't match the dagobah sets and lights. It would be completely out of character for lucas to give a damn about even the most basic standards of filmmaking quality. Besides, there is nothing to stop him from replacing puppet yoda with a shitty cgi version and then just re-releasing ESB version 1.4 with a different but still shitty version.

Count on ESB/ROTJ yoda being replaced - and us finding out from leaked info (just like the NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! and the ridiculous letterbox 2006 release)

Will it turn the tide? not sure. With the clone wars and other things, bouncy lightsaber yoda is becoming more and more the definitive image. But I can gaurantee demand for de-specialized editions will skyrocket even more than last year.