Men are From Gas Powered, Women Are From Electric – Review of Troy-Bilt Weed Wacker

If there is one gardening implement that has drawn lines down gender preferences, it would be the weed wacker. I should know, I now own 3 of them. My most recent weed wacker acquisition came from Troy-Bilt (being the Troy-Bilt’s TB57, Lithium Ion String Trimmer) who wanted me to try it out and let you all know what I think about it. And I felt very qualified to do this because, well, I own so many of them now.

My weed wacker collection started out with me going and buying a weed wacker we were in need of one. So I drove myself down to the hardware store and bought one. I bought one that I liked, an electric one, the kind you plug into the wall like a vacuum cleaner and look like a confused housewife wandering around your yard.

My husband was not pleased. He had no desire to look like a confused housewife (he was doing just fine looking like a confused husband, thank you) and he then went out a scoured yard sales until he brought home a rather large gas powered one.

He hated the electric one because he thought it was prissy. I hated the gas powered one because it was heavy and stank. Often, the neighbors would watch the street theater as my husband and I casually wandered around the yard and weed wacked with our own weed wackers trying to prove, non-chalantly, that our weed wacker was the better weed wacker.

Now, I have this weed wacker from Troy-Bilt. It is a battery operated weed wacker and seems to address the issues that both my husband and I had with each others’ weed wackers. Now, technically, my husband is not here to speak his mind on it, but, like all wives before me, I feel that I am entitled to but my words in his mouth.

The Troy-Bilt weed wacker was light enough for me to carry around, and did not have the allegedly sissy electric cord leash. It certainly had the power to cut through the massive patch of thistle that had sprung up around my compost bin (it was like a scene out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre watched on a TV where the color is really off).

I do have to say that I did have some difficulty putting it together. I can honestly say that in this case, the problems started when I skipped the step my husband usually takes in skipping reading the directions. The directions confused me and that made it difficult to put the weed wacker together quickly. I probably would have been better off just putting it together without the directions.

But, once it was together, it worked very well. And the really nice thing about it being battery operated was that when I noticed I had missed a spot, it was no more difficult than picking it up to correct the problem. No lugging the power cord back out. No struggling to get the thing started again.

So now, I have to figure out what to do with the other two weed wackers. I suppose I could always paint them and list them on Craigslist as a matching set of his and her weed wackers.