Well, it seems the more I consider this thing, the more it appears they are charging for "Rube Goldberg" style engineering. Pretty hard to justify paying that much moolah for something that, if deconstructed, would be 1/10th the cost for the same functionality.

Not exactly what I'd call frugal investment. But at least it does appear to work. Buying survival equipment/supplies that don't perform as advertised would be worse, no matter how inexpensive they might be.