Best Homegrown Product

If Neuticles had a television commercial, it would feature a big, muscular Great Dane bounding along a beach in all his glory while a masculine voice sings the product's slogan: "Neuticles! Looking and feeling the saaaaaaame!" Neuticles, patented prosthetic dog testicles selling for $49 to $129 a pair, are implanted during neutering and allow a dog to be fixed without being emasculated. The injection-molded fake testicles come in six standard sizes and three textures. The Natural model is designed to mimic the real thing to a tee. "I took an actual testicle to a [manufacturer's] lab, and they did pressure tests to determine the exact firmness," gushes inventor Gregg Miller of Independence. The Original model is slightly firmer than a real dog ball. ("It's kind of like a glorified plastic," Miller says.) And the Ultra model is a little softer. (Miller describes it as "gooshey soft, like a marshmallow.") Miller's company, CTI (Canine Testicular Implantation) Corporation, has sold Neuticles to more than 100,000 animal owners, in all fifty states and countries including Yemen, South Africa and New Zealand. The manly globs are popular in Spain, where there have been "quite a few bull implants," according to Miller. He says Neuticles have been inserted into a prairie dog in Kansas, a rhesus monkey in Arkansas and a colony of lab rats at the University of Louisiana. "It's a local product that's done good," the proud inventor says.