You don't often see many of the colors listed above at the shows but I am sure there are people working on them. There was a movement a few years back to show by individual colors/groups instead of just solid color and broken color. Two main reasons given for this. One was to reduce the class numbers at convention and national shows to a more manageable number. Classes of over 150 are common since there is no division of color, just pattern - solid vs. broken. The second reason was thought to help promote these less popular colors by giving them a chance to compete against themselves. Hoping the "cream of the crop" in these colors would rise to the top, receive recognition and be used to further promote these colors. If the exhibitors winning the most in these colors were recognized, then hopefully people would go to them for stock. This could perpetuate the top quality in these colors quicker.
There were many heated arguments both pro and con within HLRSC and caused a division for some time. All of us are attracted to particular colors but it seems a "newbie" pitfall. New HL enthusiasts are drawn to the "pretty, less common" colors. They buy and start out with these colors. The quality isn't there and they continually lose to the more dominant tort color. What happens next? They get discouraged and leave the breed and probably rabbit showing altogether.
It is hard enough to raise a winning tort and sometimes takes years to do it consistently if the competition in your area is steeped with established breeders. By established I mean the breeders who have been in it for years and have gotten past the inevitable mistakes new folks make. Obtaining the "eye" that quickly distinguishes the strengths from the faults and puts that "blueprint" in one's mind of a perfectly balanced HL. Sometimes a rough start, not buying the best you can afford or simply falling in love with bunnies to start with that are never going to help your herd.
Here we are 22 years later and the Otters passed through ARBA's rigorous acceptance into the Standard of Perfection in 2004. I thought the Otters would do the same thing for HL's that it did in the Netherland Dwarfs. Right after the color passed in the Dwarfs you saw a LOT being shown and doing well on the show tables almost immediately. Yet 10 years later, few HL Otters are even entered at Convention.
It makes you wonder if we had moved into showing by colors if the Otters would have picked up as quickly as they did in the ND's where they are shown by individual colors?? Could moving to showing by individual colors promote the already accepted but less seen HL colors like Chocolate, Lynx, Lilac, Smoke Pearl.....