I removed the template overrides completely before posting, by physically moving the com_hikashop folder in the template's html folder. With that, the problem continues.
I created a new test product just with a single characteristic, color, and added two colors for variants. If I make a change to the default color, the text will display (but the image won't change) but after the first variant selection, any further selection fails to do anything at all.
I reinstalled hikashop again to see if that helped, but no difference. I also set the menu template to the J! Protostar and same behavior.
On the test product, I can get the text to change, but not the image when the single variant is selected.
I did get the variant selection to "break" by changing one of the test variants with the original image, which is q 74K 1200x1000 image, but I don't see how that would affect anything.
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