Well yeah; in the original trilogy Boba Fett was a straight-up villain.
It’s only in the prequels where we see his origin story, and in subsequent content like “The Mandalorian” where we get a fair amount of Fett’s back story/background and he goes from being a villain and general scumbag to something more sympathetic.
There was no bigger Star Wars geek than me when the original trilogy came out, but I am still dumbfounded by the popularity of a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot flying around in my mom’s iron.
I think this is key. Boba Fett went from literally being a throwaway villain in the Original Trilogy to being a sympathetic anti-hero with a code of honor in a lot of Expanded Universe material. They really doubled down on that in Season 2 of The Mandalorian, and will presumably do so even more in the upcoming The Book of Boba Fett series on Disney+. Combined with a greater awareness of just how painful issues around slavery and terminology still are for a lot of Americans, it’s not surprising that Disney doesn’t want a prominent protagonist to be piloting a literal slave ship.
Quoting myself from somewhere else years ago:
I believe much of it is the way Boba Fett was introduced. After A New Hope, Boba Fett was the first new character to be introduced from the upcoming Empire Strikes Back, originally not available in stores and sold only as a mail-in item (send in x number proof of purchases from Star Wars items and y amount of shipping and handling.) So he was mysterious, a promise of more to come, and available only to those willing to go to special trouble to get him! The marketing was prototypical of the modern marketing technique of slow, selective leaks of details along with the idea of exclusive limited-edition collector’s items. The minor controversy around the replacement of Boba Fett’s originally-promised rocket-launching backpack with a non-functional one because of chocking hazards may have had an effect on his visibility, too. (I can’t say how much Boba Fett’s appearance in The Star Wars Holiday Special may have influenced fandom—I don’t exactly remember clamor for the production of Bea Author and Porn Grampa Wookie figures.) The discovery that Boba Fett turned out to be a very minor character in the movies came long after the hype surrounding him. (IIRC, a Battledroid mounted on a STAP was a similar early-release hype item for The Phantom Menace, and General Grevious for Revenge of the Sith. And fan generated their own lovestorm for BB-8 before anyone knew a single thing about BB-8’s role or significance in The Force Awakens.)
I don’t remember being caught up in the Boba Fett hype as a child, but I do remember the exact location where I bought my own Boba Fett around 35 years ago—a toy section that was in the back left corner of a Woolworth’s in the nearest city to me—and it was one of the very few items from my metric shit-ton of Star Wars figures and vehicles that I didn’t sell off as a teenager and regret selling as an adult. (One other item I still have from childhood is a Rancor. I also specifically remember the circumstances for buying that—it was after the hype for Jedi had cooled and stores had mostly stopped selling Star Wars items. I found it in a crushed box in a clearance bin at a K-Mart in a different city from Boba Fett, discounted down to $1.50. Said Rancor is the second largest creature within a foot of my desk as I type—the largest being a 18-24ish inch Godzilla figure with launching fist bought at a yard sale in the 1970s.) The appeal to whipper-snappers who weren’t around at the genesis of Boba Fett—I assume—originates from all of the EU Boba Fett material created to feed the original demand created by the early hype.
I sure do. Back then they had these huge Star Wars figures- like the old GI Joe ones that were like 12" tall. IIRC, they had Luke, C-3PO, R2-D2, a Jawa, Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Princess Leia, a generic Stormtrooper, and for some inexplicable reason, Boba Fett and IG-88. And the Boba Fett figure had a cool little sight-thing where you could look through the back of his head out his eye, and it had a nifty grappling hook backpack rocket. Both of those were far cooler than the stuff that the others had. I had a Boba Fett before the movie came out, because he looked so cool, and had these cool features. Then the movies were sort of a letdown- he was a bit part in Empire, and got eaten by the Sarlacc in Jedi before he did anything particularly cool.
I am glad to read that I am not the only one who thinks it looks like an iron. So many say it is a cool ship or great design, I just see an iron.
It’s a lame ship with a lame name. Neither aspect serves the story at all. The only people who care about it are:
- toy collectors
- the same people who get mad when you remove slavery from anything
- the same people who get mad when they added more women to the movie
Honestly this was low-hanging fruit and it’s kind of a no-brainer for Disney to make that choice regarding their property.
I dressed up as Boba Fett for Halloween, 1980. I was six. It was the classic cheap plastic onesie and mask, but I insisted on wearing my Boba Fett pajama top over the costume, as I believed it added verisimilitude. Boba Fett was the coolest.
I wore it went we went to see the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. It was wild. There was an adult there who had a Boba Fett costume, too - a much better one than mine - and he saw me and gave me a thumbs up.
Meh, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with trying to ease kids into the horror of the real world.
For such a lame ship and name it seems an awfully popular part of Star Wars lore. I’m sure all who are Star Wars fans and saw the title of the OP immediately knew what it was. Apart from the Millennium Falcon are there any other singular ships in Star Wars lore as well known as Slave 1? Death Star if you want to call that a ship…which I guess it technically is…but it’s actual name is DS-1 Orbital Battle Station (I have seen DS-1 Death Star Mobile Battle Station) which I bet few would recognize.
The Tantive IV?
I had no idea. I thought “Slave-1” was the name of a new show about to “drop” on Disney+. I had no idea that stupid looking spaceship even had a name.
After the Millennium Falcon, the most popular ships don’t even have specific names: X-Wing, Y-Wing, Tie, Star Destroyer, etc.
I’d put The Executor above that. “Tantive IV” is a pretty obscure name. I think it’s only been kind of recently that it actually started showing up outside of the old X-Wing video game.
In terms of names that get actual screen time, the winner’s got to be the Ghost from the Rebels cartoon.
I always thought that was a class name and not the name of an individual ship (although class names usually come from the name of the first ship in its class so it can be both).
It was both.
Interestingly, the Lego Tantive IV is marketed as the Tantive IV.
And that’s a pretty silly name, too. Who decided that naming a ship after the person who probates a will was in any way intimidating? 
Whoever came up with it probably thought an executor was a person who performed executions. 
actually as someone who inherited one of the toy ships in the mid 80s (a social worker gave it to me after it was donated )
I never knew it flew vertically until ep2 … although it did hold mt solo in carbonite set I had …