Wolverine was never very popular with my friends and I until the Claremont-Byrne run on X-Men. The first X-Men issues we read off the stands were the mid-'70s reprints, and Cyclops was--hands down--the coolest X-Man, and (to us at least) one of the cooler characters in the entire Marvel universe. There was just something about the costume, the visor, the eye beams, etc., that put him over the top for the 10 year-old comic kids at West Creek Hills Elementary School, ca. 1975.
I remember seeing the "new" X-Men for the first time at a friend's house (maybe around #96 or so?), and thinking "wow...these characters kinda suck." But a few years later, we were all crazy about the Byrne stuff...and Wolverine.