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Do they still sell Burma-Shave?
Philip Morris sold the Burma-Shave brand name to American Safety Razor Company in 1968, but the name remained dormant until 1997 when it was reintroduced for a line of shaving cream, razors, and accessories.
What happened to the Burma-Shave signs?
So what happened to this iconic bit of advertising? Well, Burma-Shave was bought by the American Razor Company in 1963 and the signs started to come down after that. Only one complete set of original signs remain, and those are housed in the Smithsonian.
What were the Burma-Shave signs?
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small sequential highway roadside signs.
How many Burma-Shave signs were there?
7,000 signs
At the peak of Burma-Shave’s successful run, there were over 7,000 signs erected along American highways in 45 states.
When were Burma-Shave signs popular?
Why the Burma-Shave Campaign Endured Today Burma-Shave is remembered more for its advertising campaign, less for its product. The signs were a national pastime from 1927 through the 1950s. They were posted until 1963, but by that time the driving experience, and increased speed, was much different.
When were Burma-Shave signs most popular?
Lasting in popularity and prominence into the 1960s—the company at its height brought in more than $3,000,000 a year—Burma-Shave signs often made reference to safe driving and road trips.
When did Burma-Shave go out of business?
Interstate highways came along. Populations concentrated in big cities. Burma Shave’s sales dwindled, and Gillette bought the company in 1964. It ended the ad campaign, and Burma Shave signs disappeared by 1966.
Who started Burma-Shave?
Allan Odell
By the 1920s, commercial signs and billboards turned the roadside into an advertising medium. Allan Odell, sales manager of the family-owned Burma-Vita Company, created serial roadside rhymes in 1926 to advertise the company’s brushless shaving cream.
What Burma-Shave mean?
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ˈBurma shave trademark a type of shaving cream that used to be very popular in the US. It used to advertise by putting each line of a funny short poem on a sign along the road, so that you would read the poem gradually as you drove. Exercises.