Just when I thought I had seen everything. But it has reared its ugly head again. It has just renewed my theory that marketing people have all read the same marketing book. They, on a whole, have no idea of what it means to have a great collection. HL clearly attempted to market their other lines by introducing it to HL collectors and most have failed. They have failed to protect the integrity of the HL lighthouse collection. Almost every company has done the same thing. This is clearly an effort to cross pollenate collections in a feeble attempt to try and keep a collectors base out there. HL is not the first in doing this. In fact they were a little slow. Department 56 and Precious Moments, to name a few, have incorporated Disney characters onto their figurines. They have started about 3 years ago, and have steadily increased the amount of "mixed" figurines in their lines. Disney has had an event in Florida for the last two years introducing these pieces. It is an attempt to draw collectors from both venues in hope of maintaining somewhat of a collectors base. Now HL is going to try and draw David Winters collectors with HL collectors? Both collections have lost a large part of their collector base.
Now "David Winters" is a great artist, but if I wanted to collect his work I would buy his cottages. He could have put this piece in his collection. It is the beginning of more to come. Besides what will we be looking for a "Mouse" or a "Seahorse"
After reading these "Posts" the smartist thing HL could do is bite the bullit and take the phony lighthouse out of the collection and get back to the business of producing "Real lighthouses", new ones that have not been produced two or three times before.