Burma-Shave was a popular brand of brushless shaving cream, made famous by a brilliant advertising campaign that featured a series of witty rhyming poems appearing in a sequence of roadside signs that would entertain the motorist driving down the road.
In this episode of The Route 66 Podcast, Anthony Arno interviews Clinton B. Odell, grandson of the founder of Burma-Shave. This episode begins with over twenty Burma-Shave jingles professionally recorded to give the listener a brief background of some of the earliest jingles, the most humorous, those promoting road safety, and even those that were released during the war years to unite the country.
Mr. Odell talks about the creation of the Burma-Shave company, which was originally created as a liniment product for burn victims. When the founder switched products in 1925 to brushless shaving cream, he gave his son $200 to create a marketing campaign. The result was the Burma-Shave rhyming campaign.
Clinton talks about his his father, Alan Odell, who came up with the Burma-Shave campaign.