The Ugly Chinese Canadian is a stickler for tradition.

When bumph is received in the email or shared on Facebook from politicians professing to have or to initiate a Burma Shave, one can’t help but to want to rapp these wannabes on their dense skulls on how to do it right.

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Burma Shave

Bur·ma’ Shave \ (noun) … http://www.uglychinesecanadian.com

An advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, consecutive highway billboard signs, named after the old shaving company of the same name.
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Politicians on the westcoast have caught up with this method of self promotion. We’ve seen them, small groups of candidates and their supporters wildly waving signs at traffic intersections and the like. It’s more akin to a protest if you ask me.

True Burma Shaving occurs in the form of individual, separated – punctuated signs – that together reads as an intelligent thought. Waving your sign with just your name on it, just doesn’t cut it.

Think of Huey, Dewey and Louie, the Donald Duck nephews and how they talk. Now work that idea into graphic signage to get true Burma shavin’.

Correct Burma Shaving:
individual signs completing message.

: : : : : : :

[PHOTO REMOVED]

Amateur Burma Shaving
waving hands & sporting signs just don’t cut it

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From Wikipedia “Burma Shaving”:

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 coming “from the Malay Peninsula and Burma.” Demand was sparse for the liniment, and the company sought to expand the product’s sales by introducing a product with wider appeal.

To increase sales, the owners developed the famous Burma-Shave advertising sign program, and sales took off. At its peak, Burma-Shave was the second-highest selling brushless shaving cream in the United States. However, sales declined in the 1950s, and in 1963 the company was sold to Phillip 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, including a nostalgic shaving soap and brush kit. In fact, 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 appeared from 1925 to 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 billboards would be posted along the edge of highways, spaced so they could be read consecutively by motorists driving by. The last sign was almost always the name of the product. The signs themselves were originally produced in two color combinations: red-and-white and orange-and-black, though the latter combination was dropped after only 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 the billboard was a highly successful advertising gimmick during the early years of the automobile, drawing attention and passers-by who were curious to discover the punchline. However, as the Interstate system expanded in the late 1950s and average vehicle speeds increased, it became increasingly difficult to attract motorists’ attention with relatively small signs, especially near major cities with their burgeoning arterial interchanges.

Some of the signs, instead of directly advertising what the shaving cream could do, would feature public safety messages (usually about speeding).