The actor who played Flick explained the whole thing, saying the set directors put a piece of plastic over the flagpole: "It had a little hole in it with a suction tube that went into the snow — you couldn’t see it. It was a little motor, like a small vacuum cleaner, [and] the hole-opening [in the plastic] was about the size of your pinky nail. So when you put your tongue there or finger or whatever, it just stuck."