Those Burma-Shave signs, remember them?  I thought they were completely gone long ago, but I happened upon a string of them on a drive out West a couple months ago.

A relic of a time when driving a long distance was a bit of an adventure and roadside diversions a welcome thing, the Burma-Shave signs were once ubiquitous, but now, as far as I can find out, limited to a nostalgic collection of replicated icons along old Route 66 in Arizona.

The Burma-Shave brand of brushless shaving cream was the creation of Clinton Odell and his sons Leonard and Allan.  Their Minneapolis company, Burma-Vita, was named after a liniment that wasn’t selling very well.  The ‘Burma’ came from the Malay Peninsula, the origin of one of the ingredients of the unprofitable product.

So they hired a chemist to come up with something people would use daily and voila! Burma-Shave was born in 1925.    Allan Odell is credited with coming up with the advertising idea.  He noticed a series of signs along the highway saying consecutively, Gas, Oil, Restrooms, with the final one pointing to a service station.  That sequence caught his eye better than a single billboard and he wanted to try it out for the shaving cream.  His father gave him $200 to try it out locally and sales soared.

Soon the signs were nationwide and business was booming. Typically,  consecutive small signs would be posted along the edge of the highway, spaced for sequential reading by passing motorists. The last sign was almost always the name of the product.

The first set of slogans were written by the Odells; however, they soon started an annual contest for people to submit the rhymes. With winners receiving a $100 prize, some contests received over 50,000 entries.

From 1925 into the 1960s the billboards were a highly successful advertising gimmick.  At the peak of the product’s popularity in the late 1940s some 7,000 signs dotted the country.   Postwar urban growth and higher speed limits started their demise, however, and sales fell with it.  The company changed hands in the late 1960s and corporate disinterest in the advertising campaign and apparently the product spelled the end.

Though it’s murky, the Burma-Shave trademark seems to be in the hands of the American Safety Razor Corporation these days, but they aren’t doing much with it.

And just one of those little known facts:  We can thank the American Safety Razor Corp. for introducing and popularizing the phrase “Five O-Clock Shadow.”  That was back in 1942!

Thanks for that, folks.

The signs above were along old Route 66 near Seligman, Arizona. Did you get through this whole post without skipping ahead to read the signs?  (Photos by Ron Haines)

Here are a few other Burma-Shave jingles.  The interwebs are full of them.

Within this vale
Of toil and sin
Your head grows bald
But not your chin – use
Burma-Shave

Around the curve
Lickety-split
It’s a beautiful car
Wasn’t it?
Burma-Shave

If Crusoe’d kept
His chin more tidy
He might have found
A lady Friday
Burma-Shave

Grandpa’s beard
Was stiff and coarse
And that’s what caused
His fifth divorce
Burma-Shave