I saw the Pool Essentials brand in my Walmart today at that price, and bought 8 of them without knowing anything about it. Need to SLAM my pool this weekend. I then came here to find out if it was any good and found this thread, lol! Glad to see it is a good deal, and very glad to see the info on finding the manufacturing date (THANKS!). But my question is...has anyone actually used the product yet, and does it work as expected?