Tab (soft drink)
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 Various Tab products |
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| Type | Soft drink |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Coca-Cola Company |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Introduced | 1950s 1960s |
| Flavor | Diet Cola |
| Variants | Tab Clear, Tab X-Tra, Tab Energy |
| Related products | Diet Coke, Coke Zero |
Tab (styled as "TaB") is a diet cola soft drink produced by the Coca-Cola Company.
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[edit] History
Tab was introduced as a diet drink in the mid 1960s by Coca-Cola. According to the Coca-Cola Web page, the beverage is called "Tab" because it helps people who keep tabs on what they consume. According to an Atlanta Magazine article published in May 1963, Coca-Cola's marketing research department used its IBM 1401 computer to generate a list of over 250,000 four-letter words with one vowel, adding names suggested by the company's own staff. The list was stripped of any words deemed unpronounceable or too similar to existing trademarks. From a final list of about twenty names, "Tabb" was chosen, influenced by the possible play on words, and shortened to "Tab" during development, and designer Sid Dickens gave the name its familiar capitalisation pattern ("TaB") in the logo he designed.
Tab has been reformulated several times. It was initially sweetened with cyclamate. After the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a ban on cyclamate in 1969, saccharin was used. In 1977, the FDA moved to ban saccharin. The ban proposal was rejected by the U.S. Congress, but it did require that all products containing saccharin carry a warning label that saccharin may cause bladder cancer. In 2000, the U.S. government lifted this requirement. A formula revision in 1984 blended saccharin with a small amount of aspartame; this is the formula that is currently marketed in North America. Tab sales have been dwarfed by those of Diet Coke, though enough people still prefer Tab to keep it in production.
Caffeine Free Tab was introduced in the 80s to little fanfare and disappeared soon afterward.
At the height of its popularity, the Tab name was briefly extended to other diet soft drinks, including Tab Lemon-Lime and Tab Orange. In 1993, Coca-Cola released Tab Clear in the U.S., Australia and UK. It was withdrawn after less than a year. Tab's share of the national soft drink market is minuscule. Typically, Tab is now only found in supermarkets and convenience stores in 12-ounce cans, by 12-pack or 6-pack. It is also available in some places in two-litre bottles.
Tab Energy is an energy drink released in early 2006. Though sharing the brand name, Tab Energy does not taste like Tab.
[edit] Advertising
Much of the advertising around Tab was geared towards women with an emphasis on the fact that it could help them keep physically fit, even going so far as to appeal to their desire to be sexy for men. A popular campaign in the late '60s carried the slogan "Be a mind sticker!" A later slogan in the '70s touted the brand as "a beautiful drink for beautiful people." One of these Tab commercials was mimicked in in the Family Guy episode "The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou."
[edit] Other Tab brands
[edit] External links
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