Much to my disappointment...
I kind of suspected that was the case and to be truthful it doesn't really help much to just be able to create a new product record without the options. It's the options that require so much deliberate attention in creating each product. It gets time consuming and rather complicated the more options you make available. In my case, based on the product I'm offering it could be very involved. I could even add an option for the type of paper.
That said, would you please consider passing this on to the developers as a possible update/upgrade development project. I'm sure that it's within their power to make that an easy update to the code base and it would greatly serve a purpose. In general, it's like being able to set up a product template to work off of where all like products inherit the same properties (options) so all you have to do is swap out the actual product ID and picture and you've created another entry. I'm sure you're following my drift here. Anyone working with a large product offering and complicated option set is spending inordinate amounts of time doing the same thing over and over, when it would be easy to automate that process in the code and save hours and hours of time setting up the store. PLEASE!! Let them know this is a request for a new feature. It's worth money...because time is precious.
Thanks for the quick response!!
~Kim