I think the hype needed for such a thing would have to come from at minimum an actual announcement of another run at the game. Which would mean at least some work done on the actual game.
"We're making toys for a game that doesn't exist yet" was, well, exactly what already happened. While doing it again might not go unnoticed, I don't think that'll get the level of reaction and hype needed for that sort of thing. If anything, the prevailing assumption will be that oh, it's other stuff they were going to release to tie in with the aborted game, that just happened to be far enough along to have money spent on tooling that needs to be recouped somehow.
"We're making toys for a game that doesn't exist yet" was, well, exactly what already happened. While doing it again might not go unnoticed, I don't think that'll get the level of reaction and hype needed for that sort of thing. If anything, the prevailing assumption will be that oh, it's other stuff they were going to release to tie in with the aborted game, that just happened to be far enough along to have money spent on tooling that needs to be recouped somehow.