Burma Shave Signs
BY CLIFF LOWELL
If you were born by 1960 and did any traveling, you surely recall seeing signs along highways advertising Burma Shave cream. In the early 1920s, Clinton Odell and chemist Carl Norden created Burma Shave for the Burma Vita Company. Clinton’s son, Allen, sold jars door to door. Then he suggested installing small advertising signs along highways. Two sets of them were placed near Minneapolis. The idea spread and a staff of carpenters, painters, and installers were hired to place the signs along highways in all but four states in the U.S.
The signs featured driving safety, marriage, and shaving messages. At first they didn’t rhyme. When they did, drivers were delighted by their humor advising men what could happen if their chins became bristly. “He played a sax; had no B.O. But, his whiskers scratched so she let him go.” The depression-era public needed those laughs and Burma Vita appreciated a great increase in sales.
Advance men selected open, rural spots for the locations of signs and then visited farmers who owned the land, offering them free Burma Shave products and a yearly lease of $25 to install sets of signs on their property. Most farmers welcomed that additional income.
Leonard Odell unknowingly put up a set of signs that included the farmer’s name. “Old MacDonald on the farm shaved so hard he broke his arm.” He went back to remove them but the farmer resisted. He and his neighbors were enjoying them!
Teachers used the signs to teach reading. Some children were coming to school able to read because they and their parents had practiced with the signs.
Allen was having a difficult time coming up with new rhymes, so the company decided to have an annual contest. “As you drive, play this game. Compose a jingle with this name.” Thousands of people sent in poems, all of them hoping theirs would be chosen and they’d receive the promised $100 prize.
I’ve read these signs since I was a kid. Now that I shave, I’m glad I did.
HIS FACE WAS SMOOTH AND COOL AS ICE; AND OG, LOUISE! HE SMELLED SO NICE.
‘TWOULD BE FUN TO GO BY AIR IF WE COULD PUT THESE SIGNS UP THERE.
DON’T SMOOCH
PAST SCHOOL HOUSES TAKE IT SLOW. LET OUR LITTLE SHAVERS GROW.
LOVE MAY BE BLIND
OUT BY THE GARDEN GATE
AT SCHOOL ZONES HEAD INSTRUCTIONS. PROTECT OUR LITTLE TAX DEDUCTIONS.
BUT THE NEIGHBORS AIN’T
CATTLE CROSSING MEANS GO SLOW. THAT OLD BULL IS SOME COW’S BEAUX.
The company put out signs that read, “Free offer, free offer; rip a fender off your car. Mail it in for a half-pound jar.” They received old, rusty, wrecked – even toy car, ones. Each donor received a jar of Burma Shave and the Odells profited from the publicity.
Their next ad gimmick was “Free, free, a trip to Mars for sending us 900 jars.” Customers of a grocer in Appleton, WI, helped him acquire the jars. The Odells thought they’d send him to the Mars Candy Company in Chicago, but the company that owned the grocery chain arranged for him to go to Moers (pronounced Mars), Germany where a celebration was held for him and his family.
Although the jingles were called the most successful advertising method in history, Burma Shave was losing its popularity. Costs of maintaining and replacing signs had become too expensive. Automobiles were traveling too fast for people to read them – signs were prohibited from the interstates. In 1963, the firm was sold to Phillip Morris, Inc. Some 35,000 signs across most of the United States were removed. Goofy signs pushed the product. Speed and Freeways finally got it. The Odells were asked to provide a set of signs for the Smithsonian Institute. They chose “In this vale of toil and sin, your head grows bald but not your chin.”
So, if you don’t know whose signs these are, you can’t have traveled very far.
Cliff Lowell is a contributing writer for 55+.