

Your elbow
Out so far
It might go home
In another car
Burma-ShaveDue to space limitations along the road, Hendrick put the first two lines of the verse together on the first sign to read, “Don’t stick your elbow,” resulting in the set having five placards instead of six. Otherwise, the display is faithful to the original Burma-Shave concept.Vossler relates that the Burma-Vita company was founded by Robert Odell in 1925 in Minneapolis, producing Burma-Vita, a liniment, not shaving cream. By 1926, the company had come up with the Burma-Shave brushless shave cream, but little in the way of sales.By that time, Robert Odell’s son Clinton, and Clinton’s sons Allan and Leonard, were running the company and working to save it from insolvency. It was then that Allan Odell noticed a series of small signs along an Illinois highway between Aurora and Joliet promoting a service station. He was inspired by the concept.In late 1926, using second-hand boards purchased from a Minneapolis wrecking company, a dozen sets of signs were set up along Highways 65 and 61 in Minnesota.Though the early verses weren’t written to rhyme, the signs worked. In January 1927, the company got its first repeat orders from outlets along the routes with the signs. Sales leaped from near-nothing to $68,000 for that year.By 1929, the company moved toward the use of catchy, rhyming, and very brief messages on the signs. As another unique twist in the story, the company turned to the public for inspiration.In 1930, the company ran its first nationwide jingle contest for the “bards of the open road.” That year, more than 700 entries came in. A dozen were chosen, each winning a $100 prize. Eventually, as the scope and scale of the operation increased, so did the entries, eventually swelling to more than 65,000 with an average of 20 selected per year. The prizes grew to $1000 each.All things come to an end, and by 1963, changing times, high costs, diminishing market share, and competition spelled the end of Burma-Shave and its serial signs. The company was sold to Phillip Morris, and by 1977 the Burma products had disappeared from the market.Vossler summed up the loss of Burma-Shave signs in his book in almost Burma-Shave-like prose: “Whatever conspired to take Burma-Shave from the lives of people who loved the signs, they are gone. People could jaw about their loss all they wanted, but in the end, they have to face it. It was one more indignity from modern life they had to take on the chin.”If you see a set of Burma-Shave signs out there, drop us a line and let us know. And, since many of the original Burma-Shave sign verses focused not only on the product, but other topics such as highway safety, we can’t finish this article without sharing one of those—Verse 72:Don’t take
A curve
At 60 per
We hate to lose
A customer
Burma-ShaveBurma-Shave the Rhymes, the Signs, the Times Fast Facts
- Author: Bill Vossler
- Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud
- Published: 1997, paperback.
- ISBN: 0-87839-122-3