New Products not displaying in 4.2

hello, i have just upgraded to 4.20.    
    After adding more products since the


  




upgrade, i still am not showing any new products under the "new Products" tab.
  I have verified the settings at /Admin/Setting/Catalog/Additional Settings of 'New products' page enabled (checked) and the number of new products set to 4.   I have also verified Admin/Setting/AllSettings sevenspikes.theme.traction.newproductsinfooternumber value=4

Hello,

Have your products been marked as new? That is done by checking the Mark as new setting in the Product info section of the product administration.

ok, yes I can manually mark items as new when I create them.  Before on 3.6 it was automatic and just showed the most recently added products.  This will work, thank you.