A Tale of Two Mascaras

Last summer I met my new true mascara love, Tarte's Lights, Camera, Lashes.  A sample-sized tube of LCL was included with the Tarte True Blood palette.  I was instantly hooked.  LCL was everything I wanted in a mascara: it made my lashes look dramatically longer, the wand separated them beautifully, and I still felt that they looked natural enough when I was wearing it that someone could conceivably believe that I wasn't wearing mascara. 

But all good things must come to an end, and after 5 months that sample tube finally dried out to the point where I couldn't justifying continuing to use it every day.  So into the trash it went, and into my online shopping cart went a full-sized tube of LCL.  In the interim I used my old standby, Clinique's PowerLash, and another sample, Makeup Forever's Aqua Lash formula (more on both of these in a future entry).  Neither made my eyes look the way LCL did, so you can imagine my joy when the Friends and Family box arrived and my new tube was finally here.

And this is where our story takes a turn for the tragic, because that full-sized tube I paid nearly $20 for?  It's not as good as the sample.

Woe!

Now, I'm inclined to think that the difference lies more with the full-sized brush than with the formula itself.  I've certainly heard stories about how some manufacturers will put a slightly different formula into a sample than they do into a full-sized product, but I really don't think that's the issue.  The real problem is that the sample brush seemed to do a far better job of separating the lashes than the full-sized brush.  Photo links (because I didn't save the sample tube) below:

Sample brush: From the Pretty Exclusive
Full-sized brush: From the Makeup Temple

Is it just me, or are those brushes different?

In any case, I'm not ready to throw in the towel on Lights, Camera, Lashes yet, but I would love to know if anyone else has had trouble with their LCL brushes.  My main complaint is that my lashes aren't separated very well by the brush (which can always be fixed with an eyelash brush) and thus are looking more Kewpie Doll-ish than I'd prefer.