YANGON, Myanmar — Those who have wandered the fluorescent-lit aisles of America’s largest superstore would hardly recognize the “Wal Mart” in Myanmar’s crumbling city of Yangon.

For starters, the store is scarcely larger than a typical Wal-Mart parking spot. Only two incongruous items are sold there: cellphones and washing machines. The teen clerks must shoo out intrusive stray mutts and, by the showroom, a half-exposed sewer gurgles under the tropical sun.

Ask for the manager and out comes Phyo Khat Wai, 23 and chipper, a teal sarong swishing at her rubber sandals. Though she has never set foot in a legitimate Wal-Mart — or even outside her impoverished homeland — her shop’s sign is a faithful recreation of the logo recognized around the world: “WAL MART” in blocky words separated by a star.

“I just heard it’s some famous department store in America,” said Phyo Khat Wai, her shoulder-length hair streaked by a sepia-tone dye job. Her tiny shop is one of many imitation US retail stores in Myanmar. “I’ve never been to the other Wal-Mart and don’t expect I ever will.”

For decades, US sanctions against Myanmar have blocked the vast reach of American franchising that scatters McDonald’s, 7-Eleven and Gap outlets across the planet.

There is a Starbucks in Saudi Arabia. There is a Pizza Hut in Ho Chi Minh City. But thanks in large part to US business blockades, these multinationals have yet to open shops in Myanmar, the Southeast Asian nation formerly titled Burma.

Two decades worth of embargoes, designed to drain power from a corrupt cabal of ruling generals, have created a American franchising vacuum. In this void, with few domestic intellectual property laws to stop them, Myanmar’s entrepreneurs have been free to brand their own shops with the names and logos of America’s top eateries and retailers.

Some trademarks are lifted outright: there is a rogue Holiday Inn in Myanmar’s Mandalay State and a Best Buy imitator in Yangon’s outskirts. Others such as “MacBurger” and “Burger Queen” tweak well-known titles for a veneer of not-so-plausible deniability. In one of Yangon’s slick new malls, the fried chicken outlet ICFC sports a logo in which the I and the C and mushed together in the likeness of a K. The french fries are served with ketchup and chopsticks.

Myanmar’s trademark impunity, however, is likely in its last days.

In the words of former junta general-turned-President Thein Sein, Myanmar is “engaged in an adventure to build a more democratic, open and inclusive society.” The White House has applauded the release of political prisoners and the loosening of strangleholds on trade and expression.

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