The marketing around the character and Empire was pretty aggressive in building him up as such. The he looks cool and Vader says so line we typically hear doesn’t seem to hit the half of it. There was a marketing blitz around these films at the time that tends not to enter the conversation, including coverage in stuff like Tiger Beat, some truly weird local news coverage, and for Empire a huge focus on Boba Fett. Having not lived through that, I’m usually pretty surprised when I come across a lot of this stuff. IIRC there were even county fair appearances of actors (though not the actors) in the costumes. You know “Come See the New Star Wars STUFF! Sunday after the Tractor Pull!”
The character was introduced in the Holiday Special. And as goes that thing, and 70’s/80’s cartoon villains Fett was pretty boss and plausibly threatening. Also he rides a frikin Dinosaur.
The animated sequence is kinda the one thing there that’s worth watching unironically. Descriptions of the character, photos, promo articles and what have were published all over. All pushing him as a dangerous badass you just had to see. IIRC even the card description from the toy was published before the toy was ever available. And the term Mandalorian got it’s first mention in this push, despite not appearing in the films at all. Including outlines of what the Mandalorians were, and how mysterious and blah de blah.
The films obviously didn’t pay off in this front, in classic Star Wars fashion. But the old EU leaned hard into paying off the expectations from all of that. Lots of Boba.
So by the 90s and the big resurgence of Star Wars stuff around the Special Editions, and lead up to the prequels. Fett was a serious fan favorite character. That part I do remember, it was very much like Wolverine in Marvel Comics at the time. Star Wars did not come up without Boba Fett, he got slapped on the cover of everything.
