I was born in 1977, the year the original Star Wars came out. I have vivid memories of seeing The Empire Strikes Back when it returned to theaters at age 5 in late 1982, when I was in kindergarten. Return Of The Jedi followed a few months later in the summer of 1983. My family and I went to see it a couple of times during its original release, and again in ’85 when it came back to theaters before getting released on video in ’86. There were action figures, soundtrack albums, broadcast television airings and many re-viewings from video rental stores and taped off of grainy, half-decoded pay cable airings before I ever owned studio-produced VHS tapes of the original trilogy.

I’ve been such a fan of the Star Wars movies for so long, I can barely remember life before ever having seen one. It seems they’ve been around forever and they’re still popular with the children and grandchildren of people who saw them during the first run of Star Wars mania from 1977-1983.

And yet, I can remember a dark decade from about 1985-1995, back when geek culture belonged to a marginalized group. In some social circles, it was social suicide to admit you were into Star Wars, Star Trek, watching cartoons, or doing anything the “popular” people thought was “uncool”.

When I was growing up, the words “geek” or “nerd” were seen as harsh insults that no one would dare self-apply. Despite the fact that the major TV networks played the Star Wars movies in prime time on a regular basis during the mid-80s / late-90s, what we now refer to as geek culture didn’t exist. Like disco music between 1980 and its mid 90s ‘comeback’, after the initial mania of the original trilogy era wore off, the general public decided that people who remained fans of the films were to be ridiculed, mocked, and often treated like social outcasts. It simply wasn’t fashionable anymore, and the mid-late 80s and early 90s were a very, very shallow time to be alive if you weren’t part of the “cool” group.

It was a dark time for the Rebellion, indeed. You were either “cool” or you weren’t. And the ones who weren’t “cool” in the eyes of the taste-makers might as well have been flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong. (bonus points if you caught that reference.)

At that time, authenticity was the arch enemy of fashion. Everything “cool” was fake as hell. “Just be yourself” was the worst advice you could give to someone who didn’t adhere to the “cool” people’s narrow-minded, ultra dogmatic views. I remember being literally told by a classmate in 6th grade that I would be more socially acceptable if I wore more expensive clothes. In hindsight, it’s easy ask why I didn’t clap back with “What the hell would that change? You’d just move the goal posts anyway if I could afford a $100 pair of shoes”. But when you’re in 6th grade and more than one person calls you a dork for dressing the way you do and liking the things you like, you start questioning your worthiness to take up space. Feelings like this are a big contributing factor to my generalized anxiety, for which I’ve been seeing a therapist over the last two years.

In 1995, the year I graduated high school, things were going to change for geeks and nerds all over. We just didn’t know it yet. I certainly didn’t see it coming.

On August 29th 1995, a THX remastered version of the Star Wars Trilogy was reissued on full-screen VHS and Laserdisc for what would be the last time. A widescreen boxed set came out in November of that year and I held out for that one. What made this VHS boxed set so special and significant, other than providing the movies in their highest picture/sound quality ever available on the format, was its availability. You could buy this set everywhere – even at stores that didn’t normally sell video cassettes.

The marketing campaign around this set was massive at the time, almost on par with Disney’s release strategy for Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. I’m not sure on the sales figures, but they sold tons of the “Faces” sets. I worked part-time at a Hollywood Video store for most of 1996, and we were selling copies of that set in our store throughout that year too.

There was a Kellogg’s cereal tie-in campaign along with the 1995 Trilogy release, too. I remember sending out for a copy of an exclusive VHS tape of The Making Of Star Wars 1978 TV special, only available with proof of purchase from Frosted Flakes or some of their other cereal brands. I grew up having seen that special a bunch of times on video, but this time it was slightly different. The original narrator of the hour long special was actor William Conrad – best known to my generation as the narrator of the Rocky and Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties cartoons. The 1995 reissue of the special overdubbed Conrad’s narration with the late “Movie Trailer Guy”, Don LaFontaine. I didn’t know it yet, but it was a harbinger of the revisionist history to come later from Lucasfilm.

All of this marketing blitz in late ’95 through ’96 was the lead up to the 1997Special Edition theatrical re-release of the Original Trilogy and its assorted controversies, some of which are still being debated on Reddit and in other forums to this day. There are a handful of things I won’t discuss with most people – religion, politics, the Great Pumpkin, and whether Han or Greedo shot first. However, I will tell you that I prefer Lapti Nek over Jedi Rocks (and it’s not even a contest), I’d rather hear ‘Yub Nub’ (formally titled Ewok Celebration) than the re-scored Victory Celebration, and I think “Bring my shuttle!” works better than “Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for my arrival”.

The hype for the Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition, as it was now being called, was off the charts. I remember being oh, so excited when the first trailer for the ’97 re-release played before Star Trek: First Contact when I saw it on opening weekend in late November of ’96. There were ads all over television, soft drink and fast food tie-ins with Pepsi and Taco Bell – those commercials are all out on YouTube and they’re a hoot to revisit all these years later. And there was an hour long Fox Network television special that I rewatched last week for the first time in a while: Star Wars: The Magic and the Mystery, hosted by Fox Sports host (and former Raiders defensive end) Howie Long. That program is out on YouTube for viewing as well.

The Special Edition theatrical re-release wasn’t just an R&D project to prepare for the Prequel Trilogy, it (along with the 1995 THX VHS release) re-ignited Star Wars mania among the general public. The incredible success of the re-releases, as well as the prequels, was a major catalyst in getting geek culture finally accepted and embraced by the wider public. This wasn’t just a big money maker for Lucasfilm, although it certainly raked in tons of cash from movie tickets, VHS videos, and merch at the time.

From 1995 to the present, Star Wars merchandise has had its longest constant run in stores, and it continues to be available almost anywhere you shop. Especially t-shirts (of which I have a pretty, pretty, pretty big collection), hoodies, socks, coffee cups, toys, and video games. Some of the games are/were great, some of them not. But all of these things kept the franchise alive and popular, and it helped pave the way for the rise of geek culture in the early 2000s.

With the success of the Star Wars reissues and prequels, suddenly other IP owners and investors decided that geek culture was big business and it would be here to stay for good. In the next few years and over the continuing decades, we’ve never wanted for new sci-fi/fantasy content. We’ve had the Harry Potter movies, the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, Game of Thrones, and a successful reboot of Battlestar Galactica (I’ve never watched BSG and still haven’t seen GoT all the way through, but I definitely plan to watch both in the near future). It also brought superheroes back into the mainstream. When I was a kid, we had Superman and Batman film series that started as big hits and then imploded by studio greed, but beginning with Spider-Man in 2002 and increasing the release pace in 2008 with Iron Man, we now have the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

All because Hollywood decided to start taking their cues from geeks and nerds. It turns out that the kind of escapist entertainment we’ve been craving since the 80s is a huge moneymaker after all. And most of all, it’s fun. That’s why we like it.