Flit
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Flit or FLIT is the brand name for an insecticide with the primary active ingredient of permethrin. It is most often used to control adult mosquitos. It can be used by spraying it into the air, killing adult mosquitos that are present and then settling on surfaces to kill mosquitos that may later land. A device called a flit gun was often used to perform the spraying, although today flit guns have been largely replaced by backpack-mounted and aerial sprayers.
Flit is best known today because in 1928, when it was being manufactured by the Standard Oil Company, it was promoted by a very successful and long running advertising campaign. The artwork for this campaign was created by Theodore Seuss Geisel, years before he started writing the children's books that made him famous as Dr. Seuss. The ads typically contained the tagline "Quick, Henry, the FLIT!" and showed people threatened by whimsical, menacing insect-like creatures that will look familiar to fans of Dr. Seuss's later work. This advertising campaign continued for 17 years and made "Quick, Henry, the FLIT!" into a national catchphrase.
In the novel Catcher in the Rye the term "flit" is used extensively to describe a homosexual person. The main character is harassed by these so-called queers at various points in the novel.
