Any protector that is damaged by the first surge is grossly
undersized. No effective surge protector can be damaged.
They are not sacrificial devices as urban myth purveyors will
claim.

Why are 'whole house' protectors so effective? One reason:
properly sized. For example, lets say that plug-in protector
can withstand three same size 8/20 usec standard transients.
Then the 'whole house' protector is rated to withstand on the
order of 400 such transients. Properly sized protectors is
but another reason why we install 'whole house' protectors and
don't waste money on plug-in protectors. That 'whole house'
protector costs about $1 per protected appliance. Why would
anyone pay $20 or $50 for a plug-in protector that was both
grossly undersized AND ineffective?

Appliances already have internal protection. Sometimes
surges are too small to even damage the appliance - but
destroy the grossly undersized (and adjacent) surge
protector. What kind of protection is that? Ineffective,
overprices, undersized - and too often recommended by one who
says, "My surge protector sacrificed itself to protect my
computer". This is where ineffective plug-in protectors get
recommended.

Gray Shockley wrote:
Durn betcha!

It did exactly as it should have and blew out the (I'm reasonably
sure) capacitors (RadioShack used to carry them, btw)).

That's why they are "cheap" - as I said earlier - they self-destruct
rather than your computers or radio gear self-destructing.

Stinger mentioned Standby Power Supplies. I have a 500 watt APC
PS that was pretty decently priced and my wife has one of the
itsy-bitsy SPS Power Strips (APC Office 280) and I've seen these
"PowerSupply in a Power Strip" /very/ cheap lately - 40U$-55U$.

My wife and I used to run to the front door when the Back-Up 500
signaled with a short beep; usually we could get to the front
porch to hear the transformer self-destruct.

Sometimes we were the ones with a power outage and the two SPS's
allowed us to "shut down gracefully". Other times we just knew
that some residents not too far away had just lost their power.