What's With All the Furry Animals Lately?

It seems like several different miniature companies have put out a bunch of little furry animal miniatures recently.

Dark Sword Miniatures has a pretty neat line of Frog warriors, but then they started releasing these things -



I don't get it. Different breeds of dogs as different fantasy archetypes? Who are you catering too with these miniatures? High fantasy role-playing miniature collecting dog lovers? Seems like that would be a really narrow band of people who would be interested in your product.

Reaper has some as well. They recently re-released their lady lycantrhopes models -


The one on the left looks like it is crossing into Furry territory more than were-creature. The one on the far right is pretty solid, and the one in the middle looks like a cat girl.


Also available is a Dwarf Were Shark - again we are venturing into the very specifc person who would want this. I have had a RPG character infected with lycanthropy before, but it was the wolf flavor, not shark. Don't get me wrong - this is a really cool looking model, but I have to wonder how many the sell.

Anyone else seen an increase in furry critter miniatures lately? Or am I just imaging things?