Actually, the chair kit was my second "comfort" variation.

I began backpacking before Thermarest. I remember I was thrilled when I got an original Thermarest pad one Christmas - vast improvement over the closed cell pads that had been the only game in town. Chair kits hadn't been developed yet.

That was also before internal-frame packs: everyone used an external frame pack (complete with welded-conduit frames and grommet attachments for the bag.) I happened to read Colin Fletcher's original Complete Walker book, and adopted his method: sleep under the stars but carry a tarp just in case.

Camp was made by using your hiking staff (no paired trekking poles, either) to prop up your external frame pack. You could then spread out your ground sheet in front of it, inflate your Thermarest, sit down and lean against your pack. It was actually a pretty comfortable chair. You ate supper and breakfast inside your sleeping bag, leaning against the pack (unless you were in bear country.)

Chair kits were great - I always carried one as long as I used a self-inflating Thermarest. When the NeoAirs came along, they still worked with a chair kit, but I never found the resulting chair to be quite as stable, and eventually quit using the chair kit - replacing it with a Helinox chair. That was a love-hate relationship: loved the comfort, hated the weight.

This spring, I stumbled across the Mountainsmith Slingback chair, a strip of nylon which uses a pair of hiking poles to support your back and your weight to hold the nylon in place. So far, I really like it - especially the 5-ounce weight. (Of course, it's not a solution if you're using your hiking poles to pitch your tent or tarp!)

Whatever kind of chair works for you is great; sitting on logs and rocks just isn't that comfortable after about 5 minutes!
Then came the chair kits,