Thoughts on chocolates?

I think I wrote a reply to this thread last night and forgot to hit "send" :P

I like chocolates a lot. As JandDmorphs alluded to, I think they're going to eclipse sables pretty quickly. The two morphs are often considered to be very similar (both are subtle, dark morphs, though I think they look quite different), but sable spiders and their combos typically fail to my knowledge. Evidently they hatch, but the hatchlings typically fail to thrive and die at a few weeks of age. I have seen a few live sable spiders and combos advertised, so I don't think it's 100% mortality, but I've heard the story enough to want to avoid the breeding. Chocolate spiders and their combos DO live, to my knowledge, and are very neat looking.

I have both a choc and a sable girl that I got at the same time, and while I like the appearance of the sable a lot more than I thought I would, I probably won't keep her to work with that morph. I just don't want to have a gene in my collection that's fatally incompatible with another gene -- especially since there's a similar (and even, to my eye, slightly nicer) morph out there that IS compatible. I suspect that I'm not the only person with this train of logic.

There's definitely personal preference involved, too, though -- chocolates tend to be smoother and more reduced-pattern than sables, which tend to be busier and have a granite-type pattern. They also seem to impart these traits to their combos (both make darker combos, but chocolates' are more reduced/banded and smooth while sable combos are busier with speckling). I definitely prefer the former appearance in all morphs, but if you prefer the busy/granite pattern, you may prefer the sables even despite the spider issue.

I like a lot of the chocolate combos I've seen, and I think there's still a LOT more to be done with them.