Burma-Shave

File:Burma shave.jpg

1960s shaving cream spray can

Burma-Shave was a United States brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs.

Burma-Shave was introduced in 1925 by the Burma-Vita company, owned by Clinton Odell. It was a pungent, soapy-smelling concoction which the company at first had difficulty selling. To increase sales, the owners developed the famous Burma-Shave advertising sign program, and sales took off. At its peak, Burma-Shave was the second-highest selling brushless shaving cream in the United States. However, sales declined in the 1950s, and in 1963 the company was sold to Phillip Morris. The signs were removed at that time. The brand decreased in visibility and eventually became the property of the American Safety Razor Company.

In 1997, the American Safety Razor Company reintroduced the Burma-Shave brand, including a nostalgic shaving soap and brush kit. The soap and brush set appeared particularly ironic to many, as the original Burma-Shave was one of the first brushless shaving creams, and Burma-Shave's own roadside signs frequently ridiculed 'Grandpa's' old-fashioned shaving brush.

Roadside billboards

Burma-Shave sign series appeared from 1925 to 1963 in most of the contiguous United States. The exceptions were New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada (deemed to have insufficient road traffic), and Massachusetts (eliminated due to that state's high land rentals and roadside foliage). Four or five consecutive small billboards would line highways, so they could be read consecutively by motorists driving by. The signs themselves were originally produced in two color combinations: red-and-white, and orange-and-black, though the latter combination was dropped after only a few years. A special white-on-blue set of signs was developed for South Dakota, which restricted the color red to official warning notices.

This use of the billboard was a highly successful advertising gimmick during the early years of the automobile, drawing attention and passers-by who were curious to discover the punchline. However, as the Interstate system expanded in the late 1950s and average vehicle speeds increased, it became increasingly difficult to attract motorists' attention with relatively small signs, especially near major cities with their burgeoning arterial interchanges.

Examples of Burma-Shave advertisements can be seen at The House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Re-creations of the famous Burma-Shave sign sets also appear on Arizona Highway 66, part of the original U.S. Route 66, between Seligman and Kingman, Arizona (though they had never been installed there by Burma-Shave itself during its original sign campaigns).

Examples

• Proper space / To him was bunk / They found him inside / Some guy's trunk / Burma-Shave
• Cheer up face / The war is past / The h is out / Of shave / At last / Burma-Shave
• A peach / looks good / with lots of fuzz / but man's no peach / and never was / Burma-Shave
• He tried to cross / As fast train neared / Death didn't draft him / He volunteered / Burma-Shave
• Does your husband / misbehave / grunt and grumble / rant and rave? / shoot the brute some / Burma-Shave
• Don't take a curve / at 60 per / we hate to lose / a customer / Burma-Shave
• Every shaver / now can snore / six more minutes / than before / by using / Burma-Shave
• He played / a sax / had no B.O. / but his whiskers scratched / so she let him go / Burma-Shave
• Henry the Eighth / sure had trouble / short-term wives / long-term stubble / Burma-Shave
• Grandpa's beard / was stiff and coarse / and that's what / caused his / fifth divorce / Burma-Shave
• Missin' / kissin'? / Perhaps your thrush / can't get through / the underbrush — try / Burma-Shave
• A chin / where barbed wire / bristles stand / is bound to be / a no ma'ams land / Burma-Shave
• Within this vale / of toil and sin / your head grows bald / but not your chin / Burma-Shave
• Dinah doesn't / treat him right / but if he'd / shave / dyna-mite! / Burma-Shave
• To change that / shaving job / to joy / you gotta use / the real McCoy / Burma-Shave
• Don't lose / your head / to gain a minute / you need your head / your brains are in it / Burma-Shave
• The bearded Devil / is forced / to dwell / in the only place / where they don't sell / Burma-Shave
• In Cupid's little / bag of trix / here's the one / that clix / with chix / Burma-Shave
• A shave / that's real / no cuts to heal / a soothing / velvet after-feel / Burma-Shave
• Riot at / drug store / calling all cars / 100 customers / 99 jars / Burma-Shave
• The wolf / is shaved / so neat and trim / Red Riding Hood / is chasing him / Burma-Shave
• This cooling shave / will never fail / to stamp / its user / first-class male / Burma-Shave
• The monkey took / one look at Jim / and threw the peanuts / back at him / he needed / Burma-Shave
• Listen birds / these signs cost money / so roost awhile / but don't get funny / Burma-Shave
• If you don't know / whose signs these are / You haven't driven / very far (No final "Burma-Shave" sign)
• Round the corner / lickety split / beautiful car / wasn't it! / Burma Shave
• That big blue tube / is like Louise / it gives a thrill / with every squeeze / Burma-Shave
• If harmony / is what you crave / get a tuba / Burma-Shave
• Said Farmer Brown, / who's bald on top, / "Wish I could / rotate the crop." / Burma-Shave
• I use it too / The bald man said / It keeps my face / Just like my head / Burma-Shave
• Drinking drivers / Don't you know / great bangs / from little / binges grow? / Burma Shave
• Don't pass on a slope / Without a periscope / Burma Shave
• Broken romance / Stated fully / She went wild / When he went wooly / Burma Shave
• Slow down, pa / Sakes alive / Ma missed signs / Four and five / Burma Shave
• Don't stick / Your elbow / Out so far / It might go home / In another car / Burma Shave
• Old McDonald/On the farm/Shaved so hard/He broke his arm/Then he bought/Burma-Shave
• He lit a match/To check gas tank/That's why they call him/Skinless Frank/Burma Shave
• When in School Zones/Take it Slow/Let the little/Shavers grow/Burma Shave
• Angles who guard you / When You Drive / Usually Retire / At Sixty-Five / Burma Shave
• Dim Your Lights / Behind a Car / Let Folks See / How Bright / You Are / Burma Shave

The Last Slogan Used (1963)

• Our fortune / is your / shaven face / It's our best / advertising space / Burma Shave

Special promotional messages

• Free offer! Free offer! / Rip a fender off your car / mail it in / for a half-pound jar / Burma-Shave

A large number of fenders were received by the company, which made good on its promise.

• Free — free / a trip to Mars / for 900 / empty jars / Burma-Shave

One respondent, Arlyss French, who was the owner of a Red Owl grocery store, did submit 900 empty jars; the company replied: "If a trip to Mars you earn, remember, friend, there's no return." After he collected 900 more jars for the return trip, the company, on the recommendation of Red Owl's publicity team, sent him on vacation to the town of Moers (often pronounced "Mars" by foreigners) near Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Political Burma-Shaving

In Nova Scotia, Canada, Progressive Conservative premier John Buchanan would stand at the end of a long line of party signs and wave to morning traffic. This took on the name Burma-Shaving, and continues to this day by candidates of all parties and political causes.

Popular culture

Movies and television shows set in the 1950s (either "period pieces" or time-travel plots) have used the Burma-Shave roadside billboards to help set the scene. Examples are Bonnie and Clyde, The World's Fastest Indian and the pilot episode ("Genesis") of Quantum Leap. In this episode the limerick used was Why Is It/When You Try To Pass/The Guy In Front/Goes Twice As Fast/Burma-Shave

The award-winning American Gods by Neil Gaiman contains many references to "legendary" aspects of America, including the Burma Shave slogans.

The long-running Hee Haw borrowed the style for program bumpers, transitioning from one show segment to the next or to commercials. In another hillbilly tie in, the popular alternate history Ring of Fire series lines the roads leading to Template:Grantville with Burma Shave slogans, as the time-displaced Americans redevelop the safety razor in the short story Template:GG05.

A Burma-Shave billboard sign appears on the last panel of Swamp Thing #26 (July 1984) by Alan Moore and Steve Bissette. The panel captions leading up to this are intended to mimic the format of the advertising boards.

Tom Waits' song "Burma-Shave" (from his 1977 Foreign Affairs album) uses the signs as an allegory for an unknown destination:

I guess I'm headed that-a-way,

Just as long as it's paved,

I guess you'd say

I'm on my way

to Burma-Shave

The billboard rhymes were an occasional talk topic among the characters of M*A*S*H, particularly Hawkeye Pierce and B.J. Hunnicutt. In "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen" (the show's final episode) there is a scene where Hawkeye returns to the camp, greeted by a series of road signs:

Hawk was gone,

Now he's here,

Dance 'til Dawn,

Give a Cheer.

Burma-Shave

In a Ren & Stimpy comic (Issue #3, Espresso Yourself), there is a scene where they approach a tourist park featuring a giant hairball, and the following signs appear:

If the hairball's,

What you seek,

Exit here,

Not for the meek.

Boima-Shave

Burma-Shave is also referenced in several DOS-styled computer games such as Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire, Exile III: Ruined World, and Enchanter.

Free Software advocate and developer Richard Stallman once proposed that the text-editor Emacs show this Burma-Shave-like message at its start:

Emacs is GNU

Emacs is free

For more information

Type C-h C-p

Red Skelton once said that the rooms in the Fountainbleau Hotel in Florida were so big that on the way to the bathrooms they put up Burma-Shave signs.

In The Flintstones

Feelin' warm and queasy

while floatin' on the wave?

just wave your arms, shout hello

and shout Burma Shave!

picture of an ear of corn

References

• An article detailing some of Burma-Shave's advertising techniques, as well as the story of Arlyss French
• Rowsome Jr., Frank, The Verse By the Side of the Road, Brattleboro, Vermont: Stephen Greene Press (1965)

External links

• Official site
• The Burma-Shave rhymes
• More Burma-Shave rhymes
• NPR radio story on Burma Shave