Very strange hotspot issue

Hi all:

I have a slide with 2 layers.

One layer contains solid shapes that run for specific periods on the timeline. The timeline of this layer also loops.

I then have a layer above the Blinking Lights layer. This layer contains hotspots and initially hidden captions.

The objective it that when the learner hovers over the hotspots, the captions display.

Here's the issue. If the object on the Blinking Lights layer is no longer present, the hotspot on the top layer also disappears. The hotspot is only available when there is an object displayed on the next lower layer, even though I have that object on the base layer as well.