The Family: Bringing Up Father

THE FAMILY

Father’s Day, which is beginning to edge into equal, if less throat-lumping, status with Mother’s Day, came and passed last week in a blaze of angled advertising. The things the stores picked out for special Father’s Day promotion (after the usual collection of ties, bathrobes and gold-plated putters) added up to a touching composite picture of the National Daddy.

For one thing, he is a weekend victim, compelled by his family to rise and shine even on his days off. A Manhattan department store took full-page newspaper ads to urge that on the one Sunday that was his Day Dad be allowed to sleep late.

Up at last and out of doors, he is a dear, incompetent bumbler, forever picking a spot in a high wind for a game of cards (the solution: a magnetized playing board and card deck for $10). He is equally inept at the barbecue, getting mixed up about the orders for broiled steaks—for which he needs a $4 branding iron to remind him which should be rare, medium and well done. Making the martinis is also a struggle: to solve the how-much-vermouth problem there are Martini Stones ($3), to be soaked in vermouth, then dropped into each glass so that all Dad has to do is ice the gin and pour it in.

Off at the office, away from those protective family ties, Dad is visualized as a slack-jawed spendthrift with a will of tin foil. Loving ones may keep him out of expensive restaurants with a $4.25 Executive Lunch Bag (including place mat and matching napkin). There is also a do-it-yourself shoeshine kit for $5.95, disguised as a statusful French phone, with a hand bank built in to hold the money the man saves for his family with his elbow grease. And to help the will-less fellow cut down his smoking, there is a cigarette case with a time lock that will open only at preset intervals ($9.95).

Behind his desk, of course, Father is a child playing at Big Deal. Designed to delight his foolish heart is an I Am an Executive pencil box, with gold-tone paper clips, candy pills, key to the executive washroom, tension reducers, plus pencils, for only $3.95. To help him make quick decisions so that he can get home early, there is a swiveled silver dollar mounted on a paperweight, for mature heads-or-tails judgment ($5).

Not surprisingly, Dad is not at all well. To organize his pill-popping: an $8.95 pillbox with generous compartments for every day in the week so that the poor man will know when he’s had it.