A Poulan is made by the same company that makes Sears & Husqvarna,
Murray was bought by Briggs, so who knows who actually makes it or future parts availability.

Does your Sears have the "equivalent" Craftsman model?

BTW, Tecumseh is out if business, so you night want to keep that in mind regarding engine choice.

Husqvarna owns Poulan/Weedeater and AYP, the latter makes Husqvarna snowblowers as well as a lot of Sears product. As Bill said, Briggs and Stratton own Murray.
The machines you are looking at are considered entry level. They are of reasonable quality but do not expect them to stand up under the heavy use a lot of us are subjecting them to this year. FWIW, Murray parts seem to be more readily available. As you noted, you don't have a lot of choices right now.

I realize that both of these machines are not the top of the line, and I would normally have opted for a "better" brand name, but these are the only two machines in the city so I am stuck.

Just curious with Tecumseh out of business how is it that you still find there engines on so many brands of machines. While I haven't seen them I have gone to many websites for different brands and many still list Tecumseh as the engine being used. The Poulan I am looking at just came in, and was not old stock so at the present they are still putting them on machines.

Has anyone heard what will happen for parts as there is a lot of Tecumseh engines out there and many are still under warranty.

The warranty is my question too. One would hope that there won't be issues with honoring the warranty. I don't think that Tecumseh is actually out of business completely, but they have quit building engines. I would hope that the warranty stands and if there are problems, that the equipment manufacturers would take responsibility. With that being said, there were so very few times there would be a warranty issue on thrower engines. There is an update next week, maybe more will surface on the subject. Overall, parts that you commonly need should be available. Something odd may bite you though.