AUTO HISTORY
Older drivers may remember a time when Burma Shave ruled the roadside with a series of amusing signs that drove their shaving cream sales sky high!
The growing popularity of the automobile produced it own form of road-side advertising, and those travelling American highways between the 1930s and 1960s will remember series of four to six white-on-red wooden signs advertising Burma Shave brushless shaving cream. This modest marketing tool by a small mid-western toiletry company became piece of Americana.
Travellers, particularly youngsters, delighted in such doggerel as:
SHE KISSED/THE HAIRBRUSH/BY MISTAKE/
SHE THOUGHT IT WAS/HER HUSBAND JAKE/
BURMA SHAVE (the last sign always said Burma-Shave).
“BENEATH THIS STONE/LIES ELMER GUSH/
TICKLED TO DEATH/BY HIS SHAVING BRUSH.
There was advice for wives:
DOES YOU HUSBAND/MISBEHAVE/
GRUNT AND GRUMBLE/RANT AND RAVE/
SHOOT THE BRUTE/SOME BURMA SHAVE.
And fractured language celebrating the end of the Second World War:
HINKY DINKY/PARLEY VOO/CHEER UP FACE/ THE WAR/IS THRU. Or the purely commercial: HALF A POUND/FOR HALF A DOLLAR/
SPREAD ON THIN/ABOVE THE COLLAR.
There was even a little cracker barrel philosophy:
WITHIN THIS VALE/OF TOIL/AND SIN/
YOUR HEAD GROWS BALD/BUT NOT YOUR CHIN.
The idea for the signs didn't come from New York's Madison Avenue, but from a family business facing bankruptcy.
In the early days of Minneapolis, Minn., a local lawyer/U.S. marshal named Odell concocted a liniment for aches and pains. Claiming most of the ingredients came from Burma he called it Burma-Vita and had modest local sales.
His son, lawyer Clinton Odell was prospering in the insurance business until illness stalled his career in the early 1920s. During convalescence Clinton noted that Burma-Vita liniment was used only when people had sore muscles. He determined the company needed a product used daily.
Clinton and his sons Allan and Leonard made a deal with dad and engaged a chemist friend Carl Norren to develop a brushless shaving cream. He began by modifying a marginal English shaving cream, Lloyd’s Euxesis, finally finding an acceptable formula on iteration one-forty-three.
The two young men set out peddling their new Burma-Shave brushless shaving cream. Travelling long hours visiting drug stores with only modest success became discouraging. But while traveling Allan had noticed the magnetic attraction of series of signs advertising restaurants, gasoline, lodgings, etc. He found himself reading every one, and suggested they try it.
His father was sceptical, but sought the advice of local and Chicago advertising executives. Their counsel was largely negative and Odell senior was ready to abandon it until persuaded by Allan’s enthusiasm.
They allocated $200 for a few sets of signs which they created with used lumber and erected them in 1925 on two highways, one between Minneapolis and Albert Lea, and the other between Minneapolis and Red Wing.
Business began improving. Burma-Shave orders started coming from local drug stores, a revelation for a little company that rarely received unsolicited business.
The following year the sign budget increased to $25,000. The catchy six-sign jingles were spaced approximately 30 metres (100 ft) apart just inside property lines for which land owners received a small fee. Their rhythmic cadence was corny, clever and witty but never crude.
There were warnings to accept only the genuine article:
GIVE THE GUY/THE TOE OF YOUR BOOT/
WHO TRIES TO/HAND YOU/A SUBSTITUTE, cracker barrel philosophy: WITHIN THIS VALE/OF TOIL/AND SIN/
YOUR HEAD GROWS BALD/BUT NOT YOUR CHIN. Social service messages: DRINKING DRIVERS/NOTHING WORSE/
THEY PUT/THE QUART/BEFORE THE HEARSE, And safety plus commercial PAST SCHOOLHOUSES/TAKE IT SLOW/
LET THE LITTLE/SHAVERS GROW
For the first few years Odells concocted all the jingles but eventually ran dry. They tapped the public for verses with an annual contest. From the up to 50,000 entries they added some 25 each year, paying a $100 prize for each one used.
Business flourished and the little signs seemed to appear everywhere from Hollywood movies to Antarctica. Despite the dreary 1930s Depression BurmaShave became a $3 million annual gross enterprise; at its peak it was America's second largest selling shaving cream. In the glory years – 1930s to the 1950s – there were 600 jingles on some 40,000 signs in 45 states.
Clinton Odell died in 1958 and Alan in 1994. The company was sold to Philip Morris, Inc., in 1963, becoming part of their American Safety Razor Co. The new owners considered the signs quaint and anachronistic and uprooted them.
The Burma Shave name was revived in the 1990s, ironically as a brush and shaving cream set, not the brushless cream of Burma Shave fame.
For almost 40 years BurmaShave signs were a simple, clever and folksy advertising idea that made a family business wealthy. Theses icons of a more innocent era became so embedded in American folklore that a set is on display in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. And the Odells never paid a cent in advertising royalties.
IF YOU/DON’T KNOW/WHOSE SIGNS/
THESE ARE/YOU CAN’T HAVE/
DRIVEN VERY FAR/BURMA SHAVE.