About 25 years ago I took a class through Montana State University in Bozeman called "The Physics of Photography." The class was quite enjoyable and as part of the course I ended up with these 2 plastic cameras. Since I've been into shooting my Minolta 16P I thought I'd pull these out and play with them a bit. I did a quick test with the Yunon one, shooting Kentmere 100, setting the aperture to 8, 11, and 16 for various shots, and developed in D-76 stock, 10 minutes at 72 degrees F. I didn't see that much difference in the negatives. Here a scan of one of them and a photo of the cameras.
Most of them have 3 or 4 real apertures which is fine. But you are right with your doubts:
The camera I got from Time/Life has a single shutter speed and about F6 fixed aperture although there is an aperture setting ring. It moves nothing. For me the fake aperture setting is an absolute no-go. Time and Life magazines are known for their good photographers, so I do not understand why the gave away such a flimsy camera.
It was an incentive to subscribe, almost free to Time Life, and going to readers who were more than 95% likely to know nothing about photography themselves (even if they could recognize good work when they saw it, which at least some could).
I went out and shot a few more with this Yunon YN-300. I am using Kentmere 100 developed in Caffenol CM, 12-1/2 minutes at 68 degrees F, with inversions every minute.