Ah, making me think in terms of history...two are from donated fruit from plants, the other a stabilization of something that appeared in my garden. This is now edited with further info - dates, etc.
Lollipops - was at a local Fair produce and plant display in the late 1995, and was given a single fruit off an unnamed very attractive plant that was in a display. (saved as 95-28) (my starting name was State Fair Rainbow). So no known background, but I liked the color range and gave it a name - there is a good liklihood that this already has another name, though the donor did not know of it. I've grown it in 1996 (saved as 96-6), then as 99-20, 01-47, 02-25, 03-36 (must regrow it next year).
Spectral - this is a really odd one. Was at the Raleigh Farmer's Market in 2000 and a vendor had plants labeled Pretty in Purple. I was given one ripe fruit (saved seeds as 00-23). Well, the plant sure wasn't the Pretty in Purple I knew from Johnny's - it had obviously crossed somewhere. So I grew out seeds from the plant - they produced what is essentially a dark purple foliaged version of Chinese Five Color. Seems to be quite stable - grown out as 01-3, 02-11, 03-20, 04-33, 05-19 (I obviously like the color of this one, as it ends up in my plot every year).
Festival - same background as Purple Robe. In 1997, a really unusual hot pepper volunteered in my garden. The peppers were very slender and tiny - 1/16 inch wide by less than an inch long, but were doing the cream to violet to orange to red color thing. I managed to save one fruit prior to frost, which gave 4 seeds, saved as 97-25. Each seed germinated and gave 4 different looking peppers - very dark foliage, black purple fruit (which I worked on and named Purple Robe), not quite as dark foliage with multicolor peppers (= Festival), and two that were not as interesting - green foliaged, one had violet tinged flowers and bullet shaped fruit that went green to purple to red; the other was a longer green to red chile with white flowers. I've never done anything further with the other two selections. Purple Robe and Festival really started with those growouts in 1999. They seem to be reasonably stable, though especially with Festival, there is some variation - in fact, I appear to have stabilized dark and more pale leaf versions of each, but with the same fruit colors.
As to likely parents - Centennial Rainbow comes to mind as one of them, perhaps Pretty Purple or Bolivian Rainbow or Chinese Five Color.
That's pretty much it - now with even more mind numbing data!
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Craig
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