David, can you elaborate on this?
The other things that strike me is that the "text in row" option may apply and also the maximum replicated text size (defaults to 64Kb).
sp_tableoption used to allow you to force text and image data up to a certain size would be stored in the row rather than as a pointer. I think Andy, Brian or Steve used it in the early days of SQLServerCentral to speed up retrieval of forum posts. It doesn't apply to VARCHAR(MAX) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173530.aspx
sp_configure lets you set "max text repl" size to something other than 64Kb. If you replicate large blobs this is very useful.