Theodore Seuss Geisel devoted his early career to creating advertising campaigns for Standard Oil – where for more than 15 years he developed the skills that would redefine children’s literature. This Standard Oil Company “Essolube” oil charge card was issued between 1930 and 1940.

The Dr. Seuss Collection of the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego notes that the future Dr. Seuss, “hawked such diverse goods as ball bearings, radio promotional spots, beer, and sugar.” The library preserves examples of his Standard Oil artwork, including this 1932 gasoline advertisement.

Ted Geisel’s unique critters populated Standard Oil advertisements for “Flit,” once a popular bug spray.

About 30 years before the Grinch stole Christmas, Dr. Seuss’ strange but wonderful critters worked for Standard Oil of New Jersey.

In the January 14, 1928, issue of New York City’s Judge magazine, Theodore Seuss Geisel first introduced America to one of the many characters inhabiting his imaginative menagerie.

Dr. Seuss later said his experience working at Standard Oil “taught me conciseness and how to marry pictures with words.”

In the cartoon that launched his career, Geisel drew a peculiar dragon inside a castle.  “Flit,” was a popular bug spray of the day – especially against flies and mosquitoes. It was one of Standard Oil Company’s many consumer products derived from petroleum.

Late in 1927, Standard Oil’s growing advertising department, which had focused on sales of Standard and Esso gasolines, lubricating oil, fuel oil and asphalt, reorganized to promote other products, according to author Alfred Chandler Jr.

“Specialities, such as Nujol, Flit, Mistol, and other petroleum by-products that could not be effectively sold through the department’s sales organization, were combined in a separate subsidiary – Stanco,” noted Chandler in his 1962 book, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise.

“Quick, Henry, the Flit!”

Geisel’s fortuitous bug-spray cartoon depicted a medieval knight in his bed, facing a dragon who had invaded his room, and lamenting, “Darn it all, another dragon. And just after I’d sprayed the whole castle with Flit.”

According to the curators of the Dr. Seuss Collection at the University of California, San Diego, an anecdote in Judith and Neil Morgan’s 1995 book Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel, the wife of the ad executive who handled the Standard Oil account saw the dragon cartoon.

This advertising proof for “Flit,” a Standard Oil petroleum product, circa 1935, is characteristic of the imagination that will make Ted Geisel the definitive children’s book author and illustrator.

“At her urging, her husband hired the artist, thereby inaugurating a 17-year campaign of ads whose recurring plea, “Quick, Henry, the Flit!,” became a common catchphrase,” adds an introduction of the collection at the Mandeville Special Collections Library.

“These ads, along with those for several other companies, supported the Geisels throughout the Great Depression and the nascent period of his writing career,” the library proclaims.

Besides promoting the Standard Oil companies Flit and Esso, Dr. Seuss’s creations “have hawked such diverse goods as ball bearings, radio promotional spots, beer, and sugar,” concludes the library, which has scanned a selection of these advertisements for its Dr. Seuss Collection.

Geisel added a host of zoological oddities to Standard Oil’s lexicon while promoting Esso products (Esso is an acronym of Standard Oil, Eastern States). His critters promoted Essomarine Oil and Greases as well as Essolube “Five-Star Motor Oil.”

Smiling, toothy creatures such as “Moto-Munchus,” “Karbo-nockus,” “Oilio-Gobelus,” and “Zerococcus” appeared in advertisements that warned motorists of the hazards of driving without the protection of Standard Oil lubrication.

Essolube remains a popular product of ExxonMobil.

Throughout his early hard years, these Standard Oil advertising campaigns provided steady income to Geisel and his wife. “It wasn’t the greatest pay, but it covered my overhead so I could experiment with my drawings,” he later said.

Geisel noted that his experience at Standard Oil “taught me conciseness and how to marry pictures with words.”

In 1936, he designed Standard Oil’s Essomarine booth for the National Motorboat Show – and created the phenomenally successful “Seuss Navy.” Young and old visitors were commissioned as admirals and photographed with Seuss’ whimsical characters made of cardboard.

By 1939, the Seuss Navy included more than 2,000 enthusiastic admirals (with such notables as bandleader Guy Lombardo). Geisel remembered that, “It was cheaper to give a party for a few thousand people, furnishing all the booze, than it was to advertise in full-page ads.”

Dr. Seuss publishes his first children’s book, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” in 1936.

“Dr. Seuss” wrote and illustrated his first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, in 1936. It was rejected by publishers 27 times before Vanguard Press published it.

The Cat in the Hat was inspired by a 1954 Life Magazine essay critical of children’s literacy and the stilted “See Spot Run” style of reading primers of the time.

Published in 1957, The Cat in the Hat used just 236 words – only 14 of them with two syllables. It remains his most popular work.

The former Standard Oil advertising illustrator wrote more than 50 children’s books over a half-century career that brought the world Hop on Pop, Green Eggs and Ham and many others.

Children of all ages lost a friend on September 24, 1991, when Theodore Seuss Geisel died at the age of 87.

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