Upon further review...
The new "thickbox" seems to making a mess of the formatting...
1. I restored to a virgin product.tpl
2. systematically restored my mods, testing as we go.
3. everything was perfect, until the final edit, enabling the "thickbox" include at the end of the file, and all formatting goes to hell.
if I disable the "thickbox" include, all formatting is restored, including <p> and the qty pulldown.
I know where to look now... thanks for being here...
Jeremy