The normalization of gay dads in television commercials has been a slow but steady climb. And the coolest fatherhood commercials to me represent different races and sexualities without making a point to play into stereotypes. To that point, AT&T’s recent commercial “OK: Babysitter” recently just had me asking “wait, were those gay dads?”

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In the pantheon of good commercials, I know that a dad holding a baby for 30 seconds isn’t the most compelling and groundbreaking image, but while I was out to dinner last night, the NBA Playoffs were on the television in the corner and an American Express commercial caught my eye.

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The car industry loves dads. But a ton of car commercials have focused on dads and sons. Wunderman and Global Team Blue created this ad for Ford about a dad and a daughter building what looks like a pinewood derby car. Naturally, the Ford Explorer has all the room they need for supplies.

And set to Piero Umiliani’s “Mah Na Mah Na,” how can you lose?

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In this week’s news that should have come out last calendar year, a recent study found that parents have reported benefits of Pokémon GO with their kids, aside from the obvious clout of catching ’em all.

A small-scale, qualitative survey out of the University of Washington found that parents reported spending more quality time and engaging in more conversation with their kids – in particular, fathers of girls, mothers of boys and parents of teenagers. No word in the study if parents reported the elation of hatching a fully-evolved Charizard from a 10km egg.

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Here we are again, Sweden. We can’t quit you. You treat Dads with respect and we dig it. Not only do you give fathers 480 days to be with their newborns, you had to go and rub our noses in it with some touching photographs in National Geographic.

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The new normal is that brands are showing fathers as competent, caring, emotional and intelligent. They’re part of the family unit, no longer relegated to the hungry animal blasting in the door from work, ready to eat, have a beer and tune out. The image of fathers in commercials has matured (we won!), and because of it, commercial dads are cooking, cleaning and raising kids. It’s great.

One of the brands that’s consistently put out great dadvertising — Zillow — is back again. The real estate website has a spot on TV right now called “Gunnar’s Home”, and it tackles a non-traditional household with grace and respect.

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Too bad, so sad for a father in Pembroke, Ontario (Canada, y’all) whose son managed to buy almost $8,000 of in-game content in a FIFA game on his Xbox recently.

Lance Perkins’ 17 year old son dropped $7,625.88 CAD (about $5364.86 in USD) on EA’s FIFA game store content, which, assuming he’s playing FIFA 16, consists of “FIFA Points” – an in-game currency that allows you to buy “FUT Packs and Draft Entries” – basically, stuff to beef up your soccer/football/fútbol club. That’s a lot of draft entries; EA sells packs in increments ranging from 100 points — for $0.99 — all the way up to 12,000 points, which will set you back $99.99. Even if Perkins the Younger bought the 12,000 point packs alone, it’d still take him over 50 transactions to hit his total.

That’s dedication to the game, people.

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If your August edition of the Californian Journal of Health Promotion has gotten buried on your coffee table, as I know it does, then you missed an article about how prison yoga is making incarcerated fathers into better parents. Because duh. And double duh that this came from a Californian scholarly journal.

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