The impact of this Star Wars re-release was felt in more ways than one, especially outside of the theatrical context where an incredibly spread out marketing campaign - covering everything from Super Bowl ads to Taco Bell toys made its presence known. While re-releases of major blockbusters throughout the 1980s and 1990s was hardly a singular thing, and the original Star Wars trilogy had been privy to the same treatment, there had never been such a concentrated effort to bring back a major film like this before.

Following the release of Return of the Jedi in 1983, the overall franchise experienced a brief decline in popularity for a number of years, as Lucas moved on to developing new projects and fans began to focus their interests towards other sci-fi properties. This prolonged absence of interest began to dissipate in 1991, when the novel Star Wars: Heir to the Empire - the first in writer Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy was released. The book became an instant bestseller and was the impetus for the massive array of stories told in the expanded universe canon, but more importantly it helped to make Star Wars viable again for introducing it to a new group of people who had never watched the films before. It only took a few more years for the Star Wars merchandising machine to kick back into full gear, and with that, the decision to bring the films back to theatres was made final. One last release of the unaltered films on VHS came in 1995, prompting fans to pick up the films again as it would be their last chance to do so.