nbsp in variant title is breaking everything

[Eben-Hafkamp]

with .js endpoint:

onoptionchange callback is setting variant to null and breaking the website when it encounters a variant which contains an option title that has a   hidden in the variant title.

---

with liquid filter:

tried switching over to the non caching {{ product | json }} which is throwing a different error.
in the following code the name var is undefined:

if (product.options[i].name.toLowerCase() === option.name.toLowerCase()) {
optionArray[i] = option.value;
break;
}