Tab (drink)

TaB

The current Tab logo.
Type	Soft drink
Manufacturer	Coca-Cola Company
Country of origin	United States
Introduced	1963
Flavor	Diet cola
Variants	Tab Clear, Tab X-Tra, Tab Energy
Related products	Diet Coke, Coke Zero
Website	www.virtualvender.coca-cola.com

File:Tabfamily.jpg

Various Tab products and packages.

Tab is a diet cola soft drink produced by the Coca-Cola Company. The beverage is "marketed to consumers who want to keep 'tabs' on their weight."

As of 2009 ,Tab is sold in the countries of the Southern African Customs Union (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland), the United States (including the U.S. Virgin Islands), Hong Kong and Spain.

History

Tab (styled as "TaB") was introduced as a diet drink in 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 the capitalisation pattern ("TaB") used in the logo.

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 (a regulation eliminated In 2000).

At the height of its popularity, the Tab name was briefly extended to other diet soft drinks, including Tab Lemon-Lime and Tab Orange.

Tab's popularity began to decline in 1982, with the introduction of Diet Coke. A formula revision in 1984 blended saccharin with a small amount of aspartame; this is the formula that is currently marketed in North America.

Caffeine Free Tab was introduced in the 1980s to little fanfare and disappeared soon afterward.

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 It was withdrawn after less than a year.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 share the same taste.

Tab sales have been dwarfed by those of Diet Coke, though enough people still prefer Tab to result in a production of about 3 million cases in 2008.

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 slogan in the '70s touted the brand as "a beautiful drink for beautiful people."

One of these Tab commercials was mimicked in the Family Guy episode "The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou." Tab was also featured prominently in The Sarah Silverman Program season 1 episode "Muffin' Man“. A can of Tab also appears briefly in a scene of the movie "Ghostbusters" and also in the 1980 film "Airplane!".

Other Tab brands

• Tab Clear
• Tab X-Tra
• Tab Energy

External links

• Tab brand information on Coca-Cola website
• New Yorker article on high profile Tab fans