Roach Motel (insect trap)

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Roach Motel is a brand of a roach bait device designed to catch cockroaches. Although the term is the subject of a trademark registration by the insect control brand Black Flag, the phrase has come to be used as a reference to all traps that use a scent or other form of bait to lure cockroaches into a compartment in which a sticky substance causes them to become trapped.

Early versions of the Roach Motels used food-based bait, but later designs incorporated pheromones. The widely known tagline of the Roach Motel was "Roaches check in -- but they don't check out!" In the 1980s, this line was frequently delivered by Muhammad Ali, who was then a spokesman for the product.

[edit] The Roach Motel in popular culture

In A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Freddy Krueger kills a teenage girl (played by Brooke Theiss) by turning her into a cockroach, trapping her in a roach motel, and squishing it in his hand.

In Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, the main characters cut through a roach motel to escape from a cockroach that is pursuing them.

In the 1997 film Men in Black, Tommy Lee Jones states that "Roaches check in", and Will Smith completes it by saying "but they don't check out."

The 1980s Florida Punk band Roach Motel received inpiration from the insect trap.