Only for the Father The gift of the day I remember my dad getting a plate of fried sardines. It was prepared by his mother, his ex-wife, who knew how grateful he would be to receive the dish he grew up with in an Italian steel town dying of theatricality so much that Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about it. (An acoustic A Springsteen song, at the time.) We lived in a nearby town that had a lot of red sauce restaurants, but they didn’t serve canned fish in those days. Since my father had very limited food preparation skills and never fell in love with the type of women who could cook, this was the only way he could taste that taste again.
As Father’s Day gifts go, coming across a long-lost recipe from childhood is pretty cool. If you can’t pull it off, that’s what you should give your dad this year. If not, I have a few ideas that I’ve spent the last few months gathering for different types of dads and many different budgets. With the exception of a few picks from other dads in the group, these are all things I’ve personally tested and approved, and I hope they make your dad as happy as those sardines made mine.
Best Father’s Day Gifts for Your Dad
Aerobie Pro Ring
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St. Pierre Tournament Bocce Set
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Mibrasa Hibachi MH 300 PLUS
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Of a Father Playing with His Children
Photo: Martin Cizmar
Spyra
SpyraFour Electric Water Blaster
Maybe your dad has fond memories of the Super Soakers of his youth, but the SpyraFour is the best new water gun ever made. WIRED has been covering the powerful German brand squirt guns since 2023, and they’ve only gotten better over time. Just ask my daughter, who has to use the SpyraThree while I fire it up with this gun that refills very quickly (it absorbs enough water for about 20 shots in a cool 12 seconds) and has a full smart digital display to choose between shooting styles and show you how much ammo you have left. This is a very powerful squirt gun that shoots accurately up to 50 feet, and is recommended for children at least 14 years old. I can confirm that when I let my 11 year old and his friends play with it, the fight usually ends in tears. This only adds to the ad as a gift for any dad over 40—when I was his age, we’d throw rocks at each other, and I’d have to go to the emergency room for stitches you can see. Good times.
To Grill’s father
Photo: Martin Cizmar
Mibrasa
Hibachi MH 300 PLUS
Live fire cooking has been the hottest trend in grilling for half a decade now, possibly in response to the rise of automatic pellet grills and high-tech smart grilling. The latest device to come is the charcoal oven, which the Spanish brand Mibrasa is best known for (the smallest model, the Nano, runs less than $12,000). That would be a wonderful gift for your dad if the budget allows. However, those of modest means can confidently give this super-premium hibachi grill from Mibrasa, made of heavy gauge steel.
The MH 300 Plus measures about one square foot and weighs 18 pounds empty—you can carry it around, but it’s a little on the heavy side. It’s very hot (about 500 degrees Fahrenheit) and holds the meat very close to the coals so that the drippings evaporate and turn into delicious smoke. I made steak tacos and chicken skewers, and they were just perfect with a kiss of char. When I update this guide in a few weeks, I’ll be using it to test the newly arrived Snake River Farms Wagyu beef gift box, which looks like it’ll be on this list soon, too.
For Beach Dads/Lake Dads
This is one of the few products on this list that I haven’t personally tested, but for a dad with a pool, it’s such a great gift idea that I had to include it. Our reviewer gave the Sora, which sits in the middle of the Beatbot system, a stellar 8/10 review, saying it will clean up debris from any mess short of a storm. This 20-pound robot crawls over the walls of your pool, siphoning water and saving dad the grief of having to ski for an hour every week.
By car, Dad
Photo: Martin Cizmar
Photo: Martin Cizmar
Portable tire inflators and jump starters are good things to have, and I have both. The AX65 from Noco is the most powerful combination of the two, and the best version I’ve ever come across. The tire inflator is very fast, as fast as a gas station air compressor in my tests, and advertises that it will take a tire from flat to 40 psi in two minutes. It carries 2,150 amp hours of power, enough to jump a passenger car many times. It jumped my Dieselgate-era Jetta with ease (I’ve had the machine for a month and just needed to jump my car because of its lack of an alarm when you leave the lights on). It will also charge a phone or laptop via the 60-watt USB-C port, so it won’t just take up dead space on road trips until disaster strikes.
The one in Father’s Yard
Photo: Martin Cizmar
Photo: Martin Cizmar
My childhood neighbor Don Elmerick had the most beautiful lawn I have ever seen. Elmerick, who lived across the street from my mother’s house for nearly 50 years before she passed away in 2019, spent every summer tending to his hectare of bright green grass, tanned while mowing shirtless jeans. His greens were so beautiful that, just as legend had it, the rangers of the community golf course behind our house came to look at them. Every father I know, myself included, would love to have a lawn like that. Unfortunately, I don’t have the necessary 10 to 20 hours per week to do the research and work required.
I can’t say that the Lawnbrite system has a decent looking lawn like Firestone Country Club after six months of treatment, but it looks better than any lawn I’ve maintained in my adult life. That’s thanks to this service, which uses data from your lawn to create a custom treatment plan and sends different treatment bottles at strategic times. All you do is open the box, attach the bottle to the hose, and spray. I used the Green Machine formula in the fall and then the Weed Wipeout in the spring. If your dad is always talking about how someone else’s lawn looks, this is his gift.
