I'm not sure why the New Hampshire Reds are not more popular. They are a relatively new breed, developed from the Rhode Island Red, officially recognized in the 1930's. They are not as dark red as the RIR's and initially were bread more as a meat bird than egg layer.
Hatchery birds are not that true to the breed. They are generally colored like the breed is supposed to be but the other factors like body confirmation are not maintained all that well. If you get several chicks of any breed from a hatchery, they will be different sizes and shapes when they grow up. Truly breeding to standards is hard work. Even breeders who win championships have a lot of rejects. The hatcheries are in the business of hatching and selling chicks, so their emphasis is to stay close enough to breed but really emphasize fertile egg production. If you want to get a chicken that is close to standard for that breed, you need to find a breeder that is trying to breed chickens for the traits you want. If you are able to find a breeder that has good stock and get stock from them, and you are very diligent in your breeding program, only breed your best birds and bringing in fresh blood when yoou need to, you can do OK breeding your own birds. But unless you really study it and work at it, the quality of your stock will decrease over time. If your starting point in building your flock is from stock that is closer to your goals than the hatchery stock, you will obviously start out ahead.
When you are selecting which breed or breeds to develop your flock from (and I think the quality of stock you start with is much more important than the breed as long as you slect a breed with the characteristics you want) you might want to think about color, especially if you are going to pluck your birds instead of skinning. When you pluck a bird, there will be some pin feathers left behind. They won't hurt you and they are still on the chicken you buy from the store, but they are unappetizing if you can see them. You can see them on dark birds a lot better than the light birds. That's why the commercial meat chickens are white, so you cannot easily see the pin feathers. I suggest you consider a white or buff bird for your flock if you are mainly interested in them as meat birds. The Delaware and White Rock were specifically developed as meat birds before the hybrids took over, mainly because of the pin feather issue but they are dual purpose birds. The New Hampshire Red is lighter in color than the RIR so the pin feathers won't show up as much, but I have never plucked one so I don't know how much they will show.
This sounds good to me-glad you guys think of these things for spacey people like me 
