If you were like the rest of the nation, glued to your TV set this past February 1 during the Super Bowl, you probably noticed that dads played a significant and positive role in several commercials. This was big news – as big as Tom Brady’s heroics – because we all know the commercials are nearly as important as the game itself, and judging by the price tag for 30 seconds of air time, it’s as substantial as TV ads get.

Fast forward to today, and companies are continuing that momentum of solid sales, realizing that speaking to dads makes common business sense. They realize that dads matter – that dads count too – and that they’re speaking to them as the equal parents they are, and it turns the tide from a generation of stuck-in-time, old fashioned marketers which used to remain convinced that only mom made the family purchasing decisions.

The ever-excellent honordads.org pointed us to an ad so good it seems a crime to get up during a commercial break and miss it. Indeed, Subaru knocks it out of the park with this latest TV ad, which features a father cleaning out the family’s Forester as he prepares to pass it on to his now-grown-up daughter.

We admire the bold approach by Subaru, which proves with a soft and elegant touch that there’s more to parenting than the fallacy of dad merely acting as mom’s right-hand-assistant.

You may want a tissue while watching it, but we weren’t crying – we just had some dust in our eyes.