I'm a levergun fan for sure (love my '76 Marlin), and I'm buying one of these just for the fun of it, so long as the 'actual' price is under 400 like I suspect it will be.
I do have to agree that as much as I really dig the concept, there are some really silly missteps on this gun. If I had designed it it would have a cool synthetic cowboy crescent, and be available in 357 Mag with a longer barrel and a forward-mounted top rail. No one's going to hang crap all over something like this, but it's got great utility potential.
I really think Mossberg had a great idea, regardless of the ugly-gun ranters, but I think they missed the boat on some design choices, as well as the fact that 357 levers are really, really popular right now and hard to get (especially considering the quality issues with new Marlins).