brash_stryker said:

Bringing this off-topic discussion sort of full circle, one of the OT surprises I would love to see preserved is Yoda being the little green dude Luke meets on Dagobah. Some people (Ady included) believe this was never intended to be a surprise, due to the promo material ruining it ahead of the film's release, but I think it absolutely was intended to be a surprise for the viewer and just happened to be ruined by shoddy and over-enthusiastic marketing. Nothing in the scene up until the "I cannot train him" conveys to us it's Yoda, so a fresh viewer is just as clueless as Luke is until that point.

Even though the "reveal" happens soon after we meet him, I still disagree that it isn't worth preserving. I was born in 1984, and first saw it on tv without anything to ruin it, and it was a great moment for me, personally. Whether removing Yoda, or hiding his identity in the Prequels is even possible is another matter entirely. There probably wouldn't even be a film left with all that Ady's going to have to cut anyway :)

The marketing material may have shown Yoda....the image of Yoda, as a "New Alien from the SW sequel!".....but did it ever specifically NAME him as Yoda before the film was released?

And even if it did, that only matters for a very specific (and long past) period of time. All these years later one definitely could decide to make the reveal a surprise. Many people seem to have interpreted it as such already.