How to keep Google from indexing content in a drop down box

Would cloaking get us in trouble?

[ChrisCBA]

We currently have 3 drop downs that list a large variety of products, categories or subjects. The content in these drop downs are quite extensive (probably 60% of the text on the page).

I've discovered that Google (and other spiders) mostly consider this the primary text on our pages. Given that we have 5000+ pages, it probably looks a lot like duplicate content. We also want Google to value the actual product text, and not the drop down text when deciding on the subject of our pages.

Is it possible to keep Google from spidering the content of drop downs? If so what would be the best means to accomplish that? I've thought of cloaking, but I don't want to get the site/domain in trouble.

Any thoughts/suggestions?