FLIT was the brand name for an

insecticide Insecticides are pesticides used to kill insects. They include ovicides and larvicides used against insect eggs and larvae, respectively. The major use of insecticides is in agriculture, but they are also used in home and garden settings, i ...

. The original product, invented by chemist Dr. Franklin C. Nelson and launched in 1923 and mainly intended for killing

flies Flies are insects of the Order (biology), order Diptera, the name being derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwin ...

and

mosquito Mosquitoes, the Culicidae, are a Family (biology), family of small Diptera, flies consisting of 3,600 species. The word ''mosquito'' (formed by ''Musca (fly), mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish and Portuguese for ''little fly''. Mos ...

es, was

mineral oil Mineral oil is any of various colorless, odorless, light mixtures of higher alkanes from a mineral source, particularly a distillate of petroleum, as distinct from usually edible vegetable oils. The name 'mineral oil' by itself is imprecise, ...

based and manufactured by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, before the company, now part of

ExxonMobil Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational List of oil exploration and production companies, oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the Successors of Standard Oil, largest direct s ...

, was renamed first Esso and later Exxon. The Esso formulation contained 5% DDT in the late 1940s and early 1950s, before the negative environmental impact of DDT was widely understood. Later marketed as "FLIT MLO", it has since been discontinued. A hand-operated atomizer called a Flit gun was commonly used to perform the spraying. The Flit brand name has been reused for another insecticide product, with the primary active ingredient of permethrin, marketed by Clarke Mosquito Control. The current product is most often used to control adult

es. Spraying it into the air kills adult mosquitoes that are present and then by settling onto surfaces it kills mosquitoes that may later land.

"Quick, Henry, the Flit!"

In 1923, Flit, then marketed by a newly formed subsidiary of Jersey Standard, Stanco Incorporated, became the subject of a very successful long-running

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

campaign. From 1928 to 1941, the artwork for this campaign was created by Theodor Seuss Geisel, years before he started writing the children's books that made him famous as Dr. Seuss. The ads typically showed people menaced by whimsical insect-like creatures. Seuss's artwork associated with Flit included numerous racial caricatures which, although not unusual for the 1920s, are now seen as racist. This advertising campaign continued for 17 years and made "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" a popular catchphrase in the United States.

U-2 fuel

According to Ben Rich (a propulsion engineer on the U2 program), some raw material (possibly the solvent) used for the production of FLIT was similar to that used for LF-1A fuel for the Lockheed U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, causing a nationwide shortage of bug spray in 1955. The LF-1A fuel was produced by the Shell Oil Company.

References

{{Dr. Seuss Insecticide brands Works by Dr. Seuss Phrases