Illinois Announces 2008 State Fair Theme, Updated X1
Add comment March 18th, 2008
From the governor’s office: 
Governor Rod R. Blagojevich and Illinois State Fair Manager Amy Bliefnick today announced the theme for the 2008 Illinois State Fair will be “A Family Tradition” and feature a contest inspired by the well-known 1950s advertising campaign for Burma Shave. A brand of brushless shaving cream, Burma Shave was made famous by their catchy rhymes on small highway billboards across the U.S. As part of the 2008 State Fair, the Governor and Bliefnick are launching a contest modeled after Burma Shave’s advertising campaign encouraging children statewide to submit five-line rhymes that reflect the theme.Winners will be featured on State Fair promotional materials and signs.
“This year’s theme for the Illinois State Fair truly reflects what the ten-day event is for so many families across our state – a tradition – as traditional as those Burma Shave billboards that dotted our landscape in the 50s,” said Governor Blagojevich. “That’s why we’re modeling our theme after the Burma Shave advertising campaign and inviting children to participate in our efforts. We’re bringing generations together in celebration of this year’s Illinois State Fair.”
A couple of years ago, I spent a summer as an intern for another GateHouse paper, the (Springfield, Ill.) State Journal-Register. The Illinois State Fair is a pretty big deal in Springfield, and among the myriad stories on the fair in the paper that summer, I was assigned to write a feature about the clown band, which has been a fixture of the State Fair for more than 45 years.
Over that time, the band’s leader, Gene Trimble, said he has watched fewer and fewer families come to the state fair. You can read the full story here.
Strolling around the state fair for 45 years, Trimble has watched as the annual celebration has evolved.
After years of declining attendance, the fair crowd has begun to pick back up, he said, adding that the fair is an important part of Illinois history and tradition.
“It is dependent on families bringing their kids and making a tradition out of it,” he said. “You’ve got to find people who want to take their kids out and see the fat cows or the pigs or the fish.”
So, it should be interesting to see if a family-focused theme will help the fair continue to slowly crawl back from the mid-90s, when low attendance figures almost closed the celebration down.
Oh, and if you are feeling exceptionally witty today, perhaps you should consider entering the State Fair’s contest. Here are some examples of the Burma Shave slogans.
UPDATE 1 - By AC
The most common Burma Shave-style signs along Illinois highways belong to a pro-gun group called gunssavelife.com. Or at least, they’re the signs I see most often in my travels.
Bob Steigmann, a downstate appellate court justice, co-opted the group’s strategy when he ran unsuccessfully for Illinois Supreme Court in 2002:
The signs alert motorists that Steigmann is “tough on thugs” and has “earned your vote.” They don’t speak to gun owners’ rights, and the judge says they were not a deliberate attempt to court pro-gun voters. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that, in as much as his signs mirror the pro-gun signs, they could help make his campaign attractive to voters who care deeply about that issue.
