It feels a lot like the 90’s right now, where there is a lot of good stuff happening if you know where to look, a lot of good books with cult followings, and a lot of dreck.

 

The fall in merch has more to do with kids not being as interested in toys. Period. They have iPads and phones, or they craft and maker space things. I know my kids don’t have much interest in any toy that’s not legos. I can sometimes get them into transformers. Sometimes not.

As for the ST itself, TLJ is a movie where the average movie goers liked it, but a lot of long time fans didn’t. And TRoS suffered from bad reviews and still did pretty good. It’s at least a fun film, even if I didn’t like it as much as TLJ.

If I could give Disney any advice on Star Wars, as a long time fan, it would be this: ignore us long time fans. We hated the PT but it brought in a whole generation of new fans. We didn’t enjoy/hated the ST but my kids liked it and want to watch it again and again. So there’s your next generation of fans. Keep making films that will bring in the next generation and you’ll be fine.

 

Oh yeah, I love the period between the late 80s to mid 90s, especially in terms of comics!

Personally, I feel that DC’s stories on the Death of Superman and Batman (Knightfall) were decent too. Well, at least in my part of the world, sales were doing good.

The 90s also saw the rise of Image Comics too. I remember the launch of Spawn, Youngblood etc! The queues were incredibly long that day!

I get what you mean. Tbh my boys lost interest in Star Wars when they were no more “boy” Jedi. At first I thought it was just my kids but the same happened to my buddies’ kids. My daughters don’t even have the slightest interest in the franchise at all - and they’re into science fiction.

One of them (along with my nieces) felt that Rey’s “story” made no sense. As in how could her power level be so high without any training.

My nieces were even more harsher...calling the return of Palpatine “dumb” and the need for Disney to tag it as the end of the Skywalker” saga? The girls even sarcastically say, will Disney “continue” Rey’s story and turn her into a douchebag? X)

With regards to the toys...even the major retailers have skipped some of the Star Wars waves.

The toys thingy...I think its a spillover effect, when the parents aren’t interested in the toys, the kids won’t be interested in that.

Import stores here are only bringing in based on pre-orders.

The only light at the end of the tunnel is that toys based on the Mandalorian are in “demand”.

Oh yeah, in the terms of Hot Toys...there is almost no demand for Disney Star Wars at all. Things have gotten to such a bad state that I was only 1 of 5 folks who pre-ordered R1 and ESB Vader...I was stunned...

The trend is the same with the Marvel Star Wars comics...sales have just fallen off too.

I really hope Favreau oversees the Star Wars direction one day.

 

I picked the 90's, but only for the first half of the decade.

 

My view:
40's for the best of the Pulps
70's for Batman
Mid 80's to early 90's for all of Superherodom.

 

Bronze age, so 70s. It's when DC started to take comics seriously and Marvel continued to do what they had already been doing the best with for the last 8 years. Not to mention that is when we get Jonah Hex, Swamp Thing, the horror-like Spectre stories from Adventure Comics, the New Gods, and X-Men became one of the finest comic books of all time.