Official Info Pretty big spoiler in the new poster...

I agree. The TPM marketing and merchandise was far more insane than the stuff from Disney for TFA. Plus there's a big difference between toilet paper and a movie poster one sheet.

 

Honestly I don't remember makeup companies having Star Wars themed make-up back in 1999.

And I don't recall so many figurines formats as back in 1999. Or all the RC ships and Lego Star Wars.

And there was no tie-in big-blockbuster game back in 1999 (that I can recall) like Battlefront.

Granted my memory is not what it once was so I may be wrong.

 

Wasn't there SW Pod Racer? That was a pretty popular game, IIRC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_I:_Racer

 

Loved that game! There was also a pretty popular arcade game (Naboo Fighter, I think it was) - back when arcades were a thing.

 

I would treat this spoiler as a major secondary character in the Star Wars universe. The way Tatooine and Millennium Falcon are characters with their own personalities. This spoiler in particular packages a great deal of commentary on the justification for weapons of mass destruction (United States bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki >qua< demonstration to the Russians), the questionability / moral reprehensibility of weapons of technological terror (German V2 and V1 bombing of cities), the unintended consequences of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction among ex-superpower nations and non-state actors.

 

I have to say - after reading Lost Stars, I'm less upset that they chose to include another "Death Star."

 

Wow, I'm really glad I didn't get a good look at the poster and despite noticing the poster enough to tell that Daisy Ridley was there and where she was, I never noticed that big thing on the right. It helped that it was dark. When I first saw this thread title, I thought it might have been referencing a costume showing the outcome of a character or something like that. I'm glad I didn't see the other stuff too.

Speaking of marketing, the TPM campaigns by Pepsi and the company that owned Taco Bell, KFC and maybe Burger King had really ubiquitous commercials and ads along with an annoying character specifically made for the Pepsi commercials that I worried would negatively impact the movie (before I knew about the actual movie characters that did.)

 

Unlike most people in 1977, we now recognize that image as something and can draw from that.
And regarding that, I have to also say that knowing something about a movie in the past isn't the same because the images weren't all over the place and seeing a movie in the theater was still hugely different from seeing clips of it elsewhere. It would be easy for someone then to spot that in the poster and not know anything about it. Either way, if someone is desiring to not know anything about the movie (which I've noticed is not synonymous with "spoiler-free" considering how most people define that), the images in the poster can ruin that.

 

Rosebud was his sled?!

 

Oh man what a spoiler indeed...