javascript - When object is passed to an exports function, script fails. When same object is passed directly to function, it passes

Question

I have a function which creates objects from scraped website data. The objects look like this:

{ 
  name: 'Object Name',
  baseURL: 'http://xyz123.com',
  mainImg_select: '#item_image a',
  mainImg_ref: 'href',
  moreImg_select: '.extra_images',
  moreImg_ref: 'href',
  one_brand: '',
  urls: [],
  categories:
   [ { name: 'Cat 1',
       url: 'http://xyz123.com/category1' },
     { name: 'Cat 2',
       url: 'http://xyz123.com/category2' },
     { name: 'Cat 3',
       url: 'http://xyz123.com/category3' }
   ] 
}

I'm running it through some functions that use the request and cheerio modules. The request function is, somehow, deleting my objects' categories property; when logging the object I see "categories: undefined" (so the property is still there, just its contents are removed.

What's REALLY bizarre is that this ONLY happens when I'm using an object stored in a variable that is created by my script. If I create the object, log it, then copy and paste it directly into the code (like above except var object123 = {stuff goes here}) then my Node script works just fine.

PrepJSON is a class which takes a JSON file turns it into an object. To avoid this becoming a massive wall of code, I've pastebin'd it here: http://pastebin.com/Tgx0nnmR

This doesn’t work

This works

The only difference is that in one I'm using a returned object from my prepJSON function, in the other I'm console.logging that object, running the function, copying the log, putting it in a variable - then magically the script works.

The rest of the object is NOT touched by the script - only the categories, which stores an array of objects. For completeness, here's how the object.categories are created in prepJSON. This is the only time a script touches them:

storeCats.categories = (function(){
        $('.view-Departments .field-content a').each(function(index){
        storeCats.categories.push({'name': $(this).text(), 'url': $(this).attr('href')}); 
        if(index == $('.view-Departments .field-content a').length -1) {callback(null);} 
    })}
)();