Respectfully disagree. I saw OT for the first time in the late 90s, I was still a kid back then and didn't even know that it's some sci-fi classic (heck, I didn't even know that sci-fi is a genre. Also, for the sake of argument let's pretend that everyone agree that SW is a sci-fi ). I fell in love with that movies because they were good, simple as that. It's the same with the music - my sister hated Queen when we were a kids (mostly because I was fan of them), but years later she started to listen them, partially because their music was used in few movies and finally agreed that they're awesome Some things are just timeless.I bet if we had never seen some of the classic designs until the ST plenty of people would criticize them too. This is a very different time than when the OT came out. Sometimes things are classic largely because of the timing.
Same with music. If certain classic Beatles songs came out at a different time, they may have not been considered classics now.
Now it is almost impossible to create anything that will generate the same excitement and lasting appeal as the OT Star Wars films did regardless of the quality. Back then we were blown away by special effects that look pretty bad by today's standards. Now so many people need to be negative about everything.
I'm not saying the ST films or designs are at the OT level. I just think that is almost impossible to do because of how things are now.
As for "Now it is almost impossible to create anything that will generate the same excitement" - well, marvel movies would like to chat about that, they reignited whole superhero movie genre and showed that those kind of movies can be good. SW could also be cool these days, but someone would need to put some effort and vision into it first, at least for a few major scenes. Take Rogue One for example - overall it's terrible movie with way to many forgetable characters and quite stupid plot ("let's fix a plothole from ANH that didnt even exist!"), but people have fond memories from it because it's final battle scene was cool. Same with prequels, they aren't great as a movies, but designs from it are awesome (maybe except fighters from ROTS) and we gather here to demand plastic models of them. Painting stormtrooper in red wont generate the same kind of hype.