Instead of dealing with the headaches of global product option lists, instead, convert the option lists to be "Option Templates", i.e. a reusable list of options to you can apply to any product. Options effectively become product-options: they exist only at the product level. With this configuration, adding a new option term (e.g. you add a new color to sell) requires that you add that new term to each product that makes use of it because there would be no such thing as a "global option".
A nice-to-have with this feature would be a wizard(s) to assist in the manipulation of options, e.g. renaming an option, bulk-editing options (e.g. set price modifier of all large products to be +6 instead of +5), add a term to a list (e.g. add a new color).
Instead of dealing with the headaches of global product option lists, instead, convert the option lists to be "Option Templates", i.e. a reusable list of options to you can apply to any product. Options effectively become product-options: they exist only at the product level. With this configuration, adding a new option term (e.g. you add a new color to sell) requires that you add that new term to each product that makes use of it because there would be no such thing as a "global option".
A nice-to-have with this feature would be a wizard(s) to assist in the manipulation of options, e.g. renaming an option, bulk-editing options (e.g. set price modifier of all large products to be +6 instead of +5), add a term to a list (e.g. add a new color).