Burma-Shave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Burma-Shave was a United States brand of brushless shaving cream famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous poems on sequential highway billboard signs.
Burma Shave was introduced in 1925 by the Burma-Vita company, owned by Clinton Odell. At its peak, it was the second-highest selling shaving cream in the United States. But 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 as a nostalgic shaving soap and brush kit — ironically, the original Burma Shave was one of the first brushless shaving creams.
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[edit] Roadside billboards
Burma-Shave sign series appeared from 1925 to 1963 in all of the lower 48 states except for New Mexico, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Nevada. Four or five consecutive billboards would line highways, so they could be read sequentially by motorists driving by.
This use of the billboard was a highly successful advertising gimmick, drawing attention and passers-by who were curious to discover the punchline.
[edit] Examples
- 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
- 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
[edit] Special promotional messages
- Free offer! Free offer! / Rip a fender off your car / mail it in / for a half-pound jar / Burma-Shave
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- 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
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- One respondent, Arlyss French, who was the owner of a Red Owl grocery, 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 sent him on vacation to the town of Moers (pronounced "Mars") near Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
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
In "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen" the final episode of M*A*S*H there is a scene where "Hawkeye" returns to the camp, and there are Burma-Shave advertisement road signs:
- Hawk was gone,
- Now he's here,
- Dance 'til Dawn,
- Give a Cheer.
- Burma-Shave
