IMHO I agree that it looks like inbreeding is not the cause of kinking in caramels or even the problems with super cinnamon/black pastel.

RDR stated once that about half the imported caramels where kinked. If the kinking where caused by something other than the caramel mutation its self surely by now someone would have outbred enough to create a line without the problem. Initially trying to cull kinking out was a good idea and still might find some further mutation or some combination of other genes to get around the problem but I don't think it's going to be nearly as effective as it would have been if the kinking where caused by a 2nd gene and passed on by inbreeding which most seem to think. I suppose it could even be a closely linked 2nd gene where breeding hets might break the link but it seems more likely to me that whatever chemical abnormality the mutation causes both makes the caramel appearance and gives caramels a strong tendency to kink. At this point maybe we should be looking at environmental factors that might influence which caramels kink badly and which don't as a way to work around the problem.

With the super cinnamon/black pastel I've yet to hear good confirmation that breeding unrelated animals has helped with the problem. There was one poster on kingsnake recently that claimed it had but his evidence was based on seeing more good supers lately which could be the same odds as all along but just with more players now. I'd like to hear comments from people actually producing large numbers of supers as to what percentages are like and if they are seeing anything to improve those odds. The one very limited experience I have is seeing a clutch briefly a couple years ago with two supers. One was kinked and duck billed and the other looked fine to me but the breeder thought it had a little duck bill. You don't hear much about the kinking but I understand that is also common in the super cinnamon/black pastel. Few are willing to talk about problems or show pictures of deformed animals so it's really hard to get a feel for how common they are. I was told that the parents of these two where from unrelated lines but I don't remember the lines or if one was a black pastel. Weren’t the first two supers from the black pastels? I remember seeing comments from people who had seen them at a show that they had considerable snoot problems. But again, some seem much better and possibly perfect so if we could find the variable perhaps it could be used to greatly reduce the problem even if the tendency is part of the mutation like I suspect and can’t actually be outbred.

How many possible homozygous spiders have been produced and bred out is something I would love to know. NERD has posted information like "enough" to know there isn't a visually different super and that they didn't notice any increased incidence of bad eggs. I did hear from TSK that they are breeding spider X spider starting I think it was in 2007. I don't have access to the details right now but seems like it was several clutches and they didn't report noticing any different offspring. They did report a number of small eggs that didn't hatch that was close to 25% but the sample size wasn't big enough to prove that wasn't just a typical rate of duds. I believe they intended to breed spider X spider again in 2008 but I haven't seen if they did and of course as pointed out testing all the possible homozygous animals would be a big undertaking even once they are grown. I've also heard the rumor of someone having a proven homozygous spider but that bags the question as why they are unwilling to come forward with the animal.

Bottom line, I think spiders our outbred enough with relatively few attempts at inbreeding to produce a homozygous spider that the wobble almost has to be an example of a sporadic side effect of the mutation it's self and if spiders prove that possible then why couldn't it also be the case for caramel and super cinnamon/black pastel? Sure in one case you are talking hets and in the others homozygous but it seems like sporadic expression can happen in either.