Sardineland

Seeing this comic book, one might assume the Maine Sardine Council (which produced it in 1995) was concerned about the declining popularity of sardines and so wanted to try to get children to become interested in sardines, and in eating them, too.
Considering the state of Maine's sardine industry 15 years later, one might also assume the gambit didn't work.
The sardine cannery in Prospect Harbor, which is the last such cannery in the United States, is still slated for permanent closure next month. Bumble Bee, which has owned the facility since 2005, plans to move production of its Beech Cliff sardine products to New Brunswick. When it does, the only remnant of "Sardineland" left in Maine will be the boxes of this comic that the company likely will leave behind in Prospect Harbor. The comic tells a story about the history of herring fishing and sardine processing in Maine, so it won't be applicable to Bumble Bee's operations north of the border.
Surely the firm also will leave behind the 30-plus foot tall fisherman sign pictured on the comic cover, which now sits outside the Prospect Harbor cannery. The fisherman sign used to greet motorists in Kittery as they drove across the Piscataqua River from New Hampshire, but was moved north in the 1980s, according to local officials. I am sure there are many people in Maine who hope the sign doesn't move north with the Beech Cliff canning operation.
If the efforts now being made by many people to convert the cannery in a lobster-and-more processing facility pan out, it certainly would be appropriate to keep the iconic sign in Prospect Harbor, even if it continues to say "Beech Cliff Sardines."
But maybe the sign would be changed.
"Lobsterland," anyone?