The evolution of the Internet led to the balkanization of interests. There's a reason the "hearkening back" goes about as far as AOL - You can say "remember the Transformers?" and everybody does. You can say "Remember Robotech?" and... well kind of because the toys weren't as popular by a long shot and the show ran in syndication and what buzz there is behind Robotech is being driven by fans of non-denominational anime more than fans of actual Harmony Gold properties. By way of comparison everything after the Internet has been kept alive in a zombie-like state so they can continue to profit off of it through reminding you every now and then. Spiderman has been rebooted twice just in the time I've been in Los Angeles and WotC will keep Magic and Pokemon around as long as they humanly can because they've trained those fans to spend money in ways the D&D guys never did.

"Who Shot JR?" was watched by 83 million people. That's almost as many people as watched Kony 2012 and there were two thirds as many people back then. They'll keep reminding you about Storm Troopers for as long as they humanly can because do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it is to make you fall in love with (shudder) Minions?