This would work well with token_filter

Interesting idea. I didn't know about that module. But how do you picture it working? This module defines a token named the same as the product attribute, with a value equal to the selected option name. So a product with a "Color" attribute currently gets a [Color] token, which is set to (for instance) "Red", "Green", or "Blue" when a customer puts the product in the cart. The attribute token has a value because the customer has selected one of the attribute choices when making a purchase. On the product view page, however, there are no choices selected, so the token would contain the default option name (if one is defined) or nothing at all.

I guess I could define some new tokens, like [Color:default] or [Color:values] which could be used in this situation. Unfortunately, tokens are strings, not arrays, so for example [Color:values] would have to return something like "Red, Green, Blue" and not an array of all available colors. Is that the sort of thing you had in mind?