Hello again: It appears that the "beard" is loaded as a second figure rather than a prop. As such, it contains a host of its own morph dials including the phonemic equivalents of the primary figure, M3. If I create a spawned morph dial and then make the same changes on the beard's built-in morph dials the beard conforms properly (unfortunately, this is not a workable scenario for a lip-synched character). Spawned beard morph dials do not work either and exhibit the same problem as the M3 spawned morphs. So, it appears that unless I missed a crucial step in the creation of the spawned morphs, that phonemic morphs will only work on the primary figure, which means ... no beard. On the other hand, I guess an alternative would be to import the figure (character) into Cinema 4D or Maya and create the facial and all other hair from within those programs. It is indeed a consideration for future projects but certainly not for an ongoing project. Have a happy New Year, Ron