Let me share a example of something a bit like this which I have seen happen in my life time...
Meet the Gollywog:
It was a childs toy which used to be hugely popular in the UK. It's a black person.
It was so popular from the late 1800's through to the late 90's it became a regular character in advertising through that time and was even the mascot of the countries leading Jam and Preserve making company, it was a character which easily sold a brand. Generations of people grew up with it in their lives.
It's unclear if it was originally intended to be a depiction of a black person or if the black-face Minstrel shows of the era inspired or imitated it but either way that connection to it being a black person was established early on. The Gollywog was still around in my youth and yes, we even had one in my house which I played with as a child - it was a toy, I was a kid, kid gonna play with toy. But tellingly, when I was a kid there were no other dolls of people with black or dark skin. If you had a toy that depicted a black person at all, chances were high it was a Gollywog.
After a while, as people will, the name was shortened in common usage to either 'Golly' or 'Wog'... but the term 'Wog' it became a slang insult aimed at black and darker skinned people... and not in a "I think you look like this toy how silly" kind of way, it was in a "I'm shouting this word while setting fire to your house" kind of way.
There were attempts to distance the toy and its century in popular culture from the negative connotations, calling them "Gollys" wherever referenced rather than "Gollywogs", pop culture attempting to retain them as an innocent mascot and advertising buddy everyone grew up with... but the connotations only became stronger and stronger. As more normal depictions of darker skinned people became more common in every day life, the Gollywog became more and more dated and the term 'Wog' grew even stronger an insult until it became impossible to ignore.
When the time came for the Gollywog to be a thing of the past, people in their 40's, 50's and 60's who had grown up with this thing being nothing more than an innocent toy were up in arms that it was "Political Correctness gone mad", the equivalent cry of "Woke" at the time, and that people were trying to erase their childhood... No one was trying to erase their fond memories, but in the modern era more negative memories were being created by the existence of the Gollywog than fond ones... so go the Gollywog did. Toys were no longer produced, memorabilia became discontinued, and even that leading Jam and Preserve company dropped it as a Mascot - and it was only 20 years ago in 2001 can you believe? The depiction of the Gollywog became unacceptable.
Today my kid Baby 'BobFace has a dolly of a black person, here they are sat on my TEST chair:
Compare the above picture to the one at the top of this post and imagine if the Gollywog was still the only kind of toy you could get in the UK that depicted someone of darker skin. Yeah.
Today, I have not heard the word "Wog" used for about 15 years, and the last time I heard it was from the lips of a 90 year old who is either now 105, or dead. The world moves on, things do become unacceptable, and after a time they do go away no matter the outcry of those who see no harm in it at the time...
So that's an example I have seen of something like this happening before.
Do I think not putting the name of the ship
Slave 1 on the side of the box of Lego is an overreaction? Well... yes I do... To me it's a harmless descriptive term, a baddie name for a baddies ship and I can't associate the harm having that on the box has to do with anyone or anything... but I can see that may be a similar viewpoint to those people in their 30's, 40's and 50's who were crying foul when the Gollywog was being removed from pop culture in the late 90's early 2000's. I grew up with Star Wars. I loved the ship, I found its name and the way it flew and landed interesting compared to the Xwings and Millennium Falcons of the series... but someone out there remembers slavery was something which lasted centuries and caused real world changing and life changing harm to hundreds of thousands of enforced slaves... and one day someone will work out a way to make people realise the seriousness of that slave trade effect on the world and that it's effects last on to this day, and on that day anything with the word on it, even just a Star Wars toy, will look as dated and offensive as the Gollywog.