FLIT was the brand name for aninsecticide. The original product, invented by chemist Dr. Franklin C. Nelson and launched in 1923[1] and mainly intended for killingflies andmosquitoes, wasmineral oil based and manufactured by theStandard Oil Company of New Jersey, before the company, now part ofExxonMobil, was renamed firstEsso and laterExxon. 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-operatedatomizer called aFlit gun was commonly used to perform the spraying.
The Flit brand name has been reused for another insecticide product, with the primary active ingredient ofpermethrin, marketed by Clarke Mosquito Control.[2] The current product is most often used to control adultmosquitoes. Spraying it into the air kills adult mosquitoes that are present and then by settling onto surfaces it kills mosquitoes that may later land.
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In 1923, Flit, then marketed by a newly formed subsidiary of Jersey Standard, Stanco Incorporated,[3] became the subject of a very successful long-runningadvertising campaign. From 1928 to 1941, the artwork for this campaign was created byTheodor 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.[4]
Seuss's artwork associated with Flit included numerous racial caricatures which, although not unusual for the 1920s, are now seen as racist.
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This advertising campaign continued for 17 years and made "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" a popular catchphrase in the United States.[5][6]
According toBen 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 theLockheed U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, causing a nationwide shortage of bug spray in 1955. The LF-1A fuel was produced by theShell Oil Company.[7]