Thanks for your response.

This doesn't seem to be the case on my test site. I've had "access content" enabled for anonymous. I just did a test where I created a new role with every permission enabled except "administer nodes." when I log in with a user that has that role, I still cannot see the products. however, once I enable that one permission, then the products will show up.

This only happens with the products, I don't have problems accessing nodes that are of other types.

I'm not familiar with the drupal code, do you know where in the code it checks whether or not to display a node? Maybe I'll be able to see what is causing this condition to fail?