I'm a little scared about the A-series from Canon.
The A-series has represented a great Honda Civic (Or Toyota Corolla, which is the most recent car we've purchased) sort of experience. It's not excellent at anything in particular. It's not the smallest. It's not the most impressive. It's not the best in the darkness. But, at the very least, it gets you most of the way there. It takes decent pictures, has a decent user interface, and doesn't suck in any major way. And because it's utilitarian and not sexy, you don't pay tons of money for it.
Sadly, the Pentax medium format lineup seems to have reached it's final end, much to the dismay of my friends who are too limp-wristed to carry a Real Man's Camera (i.e. the Mamiya RB67/RZ67)
Canon's 220EX has been out for ages to represent the "tiny little flash" market. The only problem is, it has no useful features to speak of that the built-in flash already has, just a smidge more power. It has no bounce or zoom, for example. The 270EX zooms and tilts up for zoom and even lets you control the advanced features on most of the modern G-series and EOS-series cameras via the rear LCD.
Sounds cool, but it's a little expensive, given the flash power.