Participaction Pattersons.

Another place where it seems like it would be dead easy to make a Patterson into a mascot would be another Canadian phenomenon called ParticipACTION. As one might guess, it's a non-profit akin to the President's Council on Physical Fitness. Having noticed that Canadians tend to lead a sedentary sort of lifestyle, their first campaign was to compare and contrast a Swede in his sixties who exercised regularly and ate well to a flabbo Canucklehead like Elly who rewards herself for her brief forays into actual physical effort by gorging herself at Tim Horton's. Thus began a long streak of PSAs based on mild chiding, visual jokes about how screen time is cutting into playtime (their current campaign has a bunch of empty playgrounds, bummed-out balls and the song Mr Lonely playing in the background) and lifestyle spots.

Were it not for Lynn's blinkered imagination, hatred of team sports, dislike of any physical activity more strenuous than opening a bottle of Labatts 50 and jealousy of Rod for being healthier, it would seem a rather obvious ploy to make Mike and Liz into spokesfoobs for getting off the couch and getting the active lifestyle they sort of need. Instead, we had the Body Break people who were the stars of those lifestyle spots I talked about earlier. They're the Canadian Tire Couple of staying active and eating properly. Also, given the way the Pattersons live, they're too-good-to-be-true types who 'obviously' think that they're better than everyone else.