Just a little nitpick on the Catan stuff:
This reasoning is based on the Catan Card Game by KOSMOS, which every Christmas released a new Knight card based on someone associated with the development of the Cataniverse in-house that was afterward made available publicly as a print-and-play card.
The special promo cards for the old card game until 2009 weren't exactly Catanian Knights - in fact, none of them was. Some were action cards, some were (non-knight) units. See here for a complete list (in German):
http://www.catan.de/spiele-archiv/catan-kartenspiel/sonderkarten.html I believe they stopped this program in 2011 with the release of Rivals of Catan (or rather Princes of Catan), which rebooted the series and provided many opportunities to place said people in the game from the get-go.
No, there are still special promo cards for the new Rivals game (at least) once per year (again different card types) - starting in 2010. Here is the list (in German):
http://www.catan.de/catan-spiele/fuersten-von-catan/sonderkarten.html