For those who don’t know, 40-50 years ago Burma Shave would post signs on the roadside which featured a catchy, rhyming little jingles. There were usually 4-5 signs that would be read in order as the car passed them, and the last one always had the Burma Shave logo on it.
Games Magazine ran a puzzle with these as the premise. Here’s a couple that they had (my apologies to anyone who may still be trying to solve an 8-year old puzzle):
Hey you birds
These signs cost money
So roost a while
But don’t get funny
Riot at drugstore
Calling all cars
100 customers
99 jars
These would have both had a 5th sign that read simply, “Burma Shave”.
So, Dopers, let’s go. I wanna see some humorous, subpar poetry.
Incidentally, this is my 100th post. There’s cake and ice cream over in GQ, beer and appetizers in MPSIMS, and big fuckin’ group hug over in the Pit.
And the problem with small furry animals
in corners is that, just occasionally,
one of them’s a mongoose.
Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Manhattan: the Burma Shave signs only worked if you were motoring along at about thirty or forty miles an hour. They were small, and usually placed along rural roads.
With the advent of the superhighways, and 65-mile-an-hour speed limits, big billboards became the most effective method of roadside advertising.
See Bill Vossler’s charming little book BURMA SHAVE: THE RHYMES, THE SIGNS, THE TIMES (North Star Press, 1998).