Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small sequential highwasy roadside signs.  

Burma-Shave Tube and Box

Circa 1940s

Burma-Shave was introduced in 1925 by the Burma-Vita company in Minneapolis, Minnesota owned by Clinton Odell.  The company's original product was a linament made of ingredients described as having come "from the Malay Peninsula and Burma" (hence its name).  Sales were sparse and the company sought to expand sales by introducing a product with wider appeal.  Sales increased and at its peak Burma-Shave was the second-highest-selling brushless shaving cream in the U.S. though sales declined in the 1950s.

The Burma-Shave sign series first appeared on U.S. Highway 65 near Lakeville, Minnesota. The signs were originally produced in two color combinations: red-and-white. Burma-Shave signs were removed after 1963 when the company was sold to American Safety Razor Company, as faster interstates made the small, sequential signs unreadable and obsolete.  Rising maintenance costs, changing advertising trends and the 1965 Highway Beautification Act contributed to their disappearance.  Only a few originals remain, mainly in museums.

As highway speeds increased, drivers could no longer read the famous six-signs, rhyming advertisements. How many signs were there?  Roughly 35,000 signs, nationwide.  The cost of leasing land from farmers and maintaining the signs became too expensive. Interesting to note:  One complete set is housed in the Smithsonian National Museum of AmericanHistory with others in museums like The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn Michigan, the Forney Transportation Museum in Denver, Colorado and the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanaoke, Virginia. 

There are nostalgia replicas re-installed on Route 66 in Seligman, Arizona as a nod to roadside history.

A preserved set of U.S. Route 66 signs promoting Burma-Shave.

Burma-Shave rhymes often blended humor with driving safety and lighthearted digs at "old-fashioned" shaving methods.

In the last year for the signs, most of which were repeats, including the final slogan, which had originally appeared in 1953:

"Our fortune / Is your / Shaven face / It's our best / Advertising space / Burma-Shave"

 

Special Promotional Messages

"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"

Arylss French, owner of a Red Owl grocery store did submit 900 empty jars.  The company at first replied: "If a trip to Mars / you earn / remember, friend / there's no return." Then Burma-Shave, on the recommendation of Red Owl's publicity team, withdrew the one-way offer and instead sent Mr. and Mrs. French on vacation to the town of Moers (often pronounced "Mars") near Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.