 thumb|right|1940s burma-shave tube and box 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. ==history== burma-shave was introduced in 1925 by the burma-vita company owned by clinton odell. the company's original product was a liniment made of ingredients described as having come "from the malay peninsula and burma." demand was sparse, and the company sought to expand sales by introducing a product with wider appeal. the result was the burma-shave brand of brushless shaving cream and its supporting advertising program. sales took off. at its peak, burma-shave was the second-highest selling brushless shaving cream in the united states. sales declined in the 1950s, and in 1963 the company was sold to philip morris. the signs were removed at that time. the brand decreased in visibility and eventually became the property of the american safety razor company. in 1997, the american safety razor company reintroduced the burma-shave brand with a nostalgic shaving soap and brush kit, though the original burma-shave was a brushless shaving cream, and burma-shave's own roadside signs frequently ridiculed "grandpa's old-fashioned shaving brush." ==roadside billboards==  burma-shave sign series first appeared in minneapolis, minnesota in 1925, and remained a major advertising component until 1963 in most of the contiguous united states. the exceptions were new mexico, arizona, and nevada (deemed to have insufficient road traffic), and massachusetts (eliminated due to that state's high land rentals and roadside foliage). typically, six consecutive small signs would be posted along the edge of highways, spaced for sequential reading by passing motorists. the last sign was almost always the name of the product. the signs were originally produced in two color combinations: red-and-white and orange-and-black, though the latter was eliminated after a few years. a special white-on-blue set of signs was developed for south dakota, which restricted the color red on roadside signs to official warning notices. this use of a series of small signs, each of which bore part of a commercial message, was a 
1925_introductions American_culture Defunct_consumer_brands Hair_removal Personal_care_brands Shaving_cream_brands