Dalmatian & Super Dalmatian

History
Dalmatian is one of the first morphs named when crested geckos entered the hobby in the early 2000's.  The founders of the Chips line, a pair of babies I got from a local breeder, were my first crested geckos, which I got in January or February of 2003, if memory serves correct.  At that time, the name Dalmatian was already floating around and was quite popular with breeders.  Within a year or two, it started being described as an incomplete dominant gene, and the term Super Dalmatian started floating around during that period.

The Future: Phantom x Dalmatian x Whiteout Combos
While I can't speak for other breeders, for the past 5-6 seasons I have been focusing on Dalmatian projects with Whiteout/Whitewall and Whiteout/Portholes as well as red spots in some lineages.  I'm going for those three main pattern genes/traits on Phantoms in three color categories - lavender/dark/black, yellow/orange and pink/red. 

While I do occasionally make Super Dalmatians in non-Phantom variety, it's not something I've ever focused on - that being said, I do think they look cool and could see myself doing more of them in the future.

The Anti-Spot Crowd
While I don't think anyone necessarily hates on a plainly patterned Dalmatian, there are hobbyists who don't want spots on geckos that have dorsal patterns.  This phenomenon started back in the mid-2000's, when one single small scale keeper (not breeder), who had recently entered the hobby, started looking for geckos without spots and talking about it all over the internet forums (that was our social media - no Facebook yet).  Since then, there's been a bit of a herd mentality about this topic, and I don't know that it makes any strategic sense, especially if you're chasing a new combo, or cutting edge project.  Example: If I was getting into Empty Backs this year, I'd rather produce Super Empty backs with spots next year than Het EB's without spots.

As picky and particular as I am, for some reason, spots on an awesome, heavily patterned gecko hardly register in my brain, so I can't help it - I don't really mind them, but they don't really do anything for me, either.  I can understand why others don't care for them, but I think it's bad strategy to pass on a gecko you need or slow down a project in any way, just to avoid an incomplete dominant gene (meaning no hidden hets) that you can easily select away from in subsequent generations.  That's part of the fine-tuning you do later, once you do the hard work of producing the combos you need to build-up and further the project.