I never could get him to tell me honestly that it wasn’t a great idea much less that it was a totally impractical one. On the contrary, he kept calling me to ask if I was ready to proceed with the idea – the first step being my sending them a check for the $685. I told him that I thought the best approach would be to do some sort of feasibility or market study to see if anyone would actually buy something as dumb as a chrome plated potato. (I left out the part about its being a dumb idea.) He replied that his company didn’t do that sort of thing and that I should go to a market research company.

I finally got tired of the charade and on his fourth follow-up call to me I told the representative that I Had decided to pursue another idea of mine that had better chances of success than chrome-plated broccoli. When he asked me what that was, I told him I was working on a formula for chocolate-covered rabbit pellets. He seemed to think that was not such a bad idea and that I should send them $685 for them to research it for me.

* When you look closely at the pictures of their offices, laboratories, manufacturing facilities, conference rooms and technical staff, you might notice that only three faces appear again and again in all those pictures. It makes the discerning or cynical viewer wonder if he isn’t really dealing with a one-man operation (the other two faces being the guy’s brother-in-law and someone he just picked up off the street for the photographs).

Click to read Part 2 of Chrome Plated Vegetables.