Phantom
Introducing the New ACR Phantom Collection
I first coined the term Phantom back in the mid-2000's after accidentally discovering there was a recessive gene in my best pinstripes. At first I tried calling them Patternless Pinstripes, but all the literal types kept complaining that they're not actually patternless, so back to the drawing board on a name. Fortunately, most everyone liked the name "Phantom".
For the next 12-15 or so years, I focused my phantom-efforts on Dalmatians and non-Dalmatians, but didn't put much effort into introducing other pattern genes/traits. I just didn't expect we'd see a lot of success, due to Phantom's tendency to reduce the white markings, or so I thought. Over time, thanks to my habit of constant outcrossing and the Phantom gene making its way into other projects, I started to learn that Phantom doesn't necessarily suppress all white markings, particularly things like Whiteout or Lilly White, where a pretty obvious/deliberate gene is responsible.
Once I learned that Phantom could be a great canvas for making combos, the wheels started turning and I started doing some pairings to see what I could do with them. By 2019, it was pretty much off to the races. I decided to build what I referred to as a "parallel collection" of Phantoms. The idea was to build a Phantom version of my entire collection, including every project I have, using all of the same genes. It has taken 5 years to go about 3 generations (give or take a generation) in most of these projects. Not only is it working out as I thought it would, the combos are far better than expected. I'm beyond excited to finally start offering these Phantom combos to our customers.