[Dean's World] Dean: Burma-Shave

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Posted by Dean:
Burma-Shave
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1154577761.shtml


   This was one of the most successful ad campaigns of all time, and a
   neat slice of Americana:

   In this world of toil and sin your head grows bald but not your chin -
   Burmashave

   In case you didn't know, it was just shaving cream. Although it ws the
   first shaving cream that did not require the use of a shaving brush to
   slosh the cream around to make it foamy.

   Anyway, in this format you don't get the full flavor. In the real
   world, each of those six little signs would have been placed a few
   dozen or hundred yards apart, appearing out of nowhere along a stretch
   of road, so you'd be able to read one line at a time as you drove.
   There appear to be a few still in obscure rural highways just because
   they never got torn down or blew away. [1]Here is a Burma-Shave jingle
   in its native habitat.

   There were literally hundreds of variations. One of my favorites:
   "Does your husband / misbehave / grunt and grumble / rant and rave? /
   shoot the brute some / Burma-Shave"

   Or: "When the stork / delivers a boy / our whole darn factory / jumps
   for joy / Burma-Shave"

   I guess the trend for women to shave their legs probably hadn't caught
   on while they were in business.

   The small independent company ran these ads from about 1927 to 1963,
   all across America (and I'm pretty sure Canada too). Eventually they
   sold out to a bigger corporation and the brand more or less
   disappeared, but for a half century they were a beloved part of the
   culture. You'll find references to them in old cartoons and movies
   too.

   You can find a neat site that collects all the known Burma-Shave
   jingles ever issued [2]right here. And, there is a very funny and
   quite true story about how the promised to send a customer to Mars
   [3]right here.

   (Thanks to Arnold Harris for the inspiration.)

References

   1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave
   2. http://burma-shave.org/
   3. http://www.snopes.com/business/market/mars.asp