I have various little jobs here on the Ireland estate in beautiful, cosmopolitan Millinocket. One of them is groundskeeper. In this capacity, I’ve been grumbling mightily for the better part of this year that our old 4.5-horsepower gasoline-powered lawn mower is getting a bit worn out. I was hoping that this campaign would eventually culminate in the acquisition of a new riding mower, to replace the one my mother gave to her father a couple of years ago. That would have made the Giant Rear Lawn so much less… daunting.

Instead, the head office acquired this little gem: a Neuton CE 6.2 electric lawn mower.
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It should come as no surprise to anyone that there’s a fair number of toys available relating to Disney-Pixar’s current feature film, WALL-E. After all, there’s a fair number of toys available relating to any Disney theatrical release of any significance, and in the case of WALL-E, almost all of the main characters are robots - the perfect subjects for licensed toys.
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Well, after a lot of scrambling around and wondering about the stocking procedures of my pseudo-friendly neighborhood Wal*Marts, I’ve finally got my hands on my first of the smaller-scale Iron Man movie toys, which happens to be the toy line’s Wal*Mart exclusive chase figure. It puzzles me slightly, in that it’s not at all what it says on the tin. Its official name is “Iron Man Stealth Operations Suit”, which is fine - there have been stealth Iron Man suits in the comics since the early ’80s - but it’s pretty clearly not a stealth Iron Man suit. In fact, it’s War Machine.
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So, as many of you may know, there’s a movie based on Marvel Comics’ Iron Man coming out soon. And as you may not know, I happen to have been a huge Iron Man fan since 1982, through good times, bad times, and just plain baffling times. I’ve hung in there even when the questionable editorial minds over at Marvel have turned him inexplicably into a villain.

Twice.

So you might expect that I’d either be looking forward to the movie with a barely contained passion… or dreading it utterly. After all, there have been some damn fine superhero movies, and, uh, some not-so-fine ones.

Well, the trailers for Iron Man look pretty damn good - and don’t have anything to do with the brain-damaged bull they’re shoveling over in the comics these days - so I’m excited. And even if it wasn’t any good, it might produce some cool toys. Most of the first round of movie toys hasn’t reached this part of the universe yet, which isn’t all that surprising, but the area’s Wally Worlds do have at least one of the early ones in.
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