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TaB

The current Tab logo.
Type	Soft drink
Manufacturer	Coca-Cola Company
Country of origin	United States
Introduced	1963[1]
Flavor	Diet cola
Variants	Tab Clear, Tab X-Tra, Tab Energy
Related products	Diet Coke, Coke Zero

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."^[1][2]

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.^[1]

History

Tab was introduced as a diet drink in 1963.^[1] 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.^[3] 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.^{[citation needed]}

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).^{[citation needed]} Further studies find no evidence that saccharin has yet caused an increase in bladder cancer.^[4]

At the height of its popularity, the Tab name was briefly extended to other diet soft drinks, including Tab Lemon-Lime and Tab Orange.^{[citation needed]}

Tab's popularity began to decline in 1982, with the introduction of Diet Coke.^[2][1] A formula revision in 1984 blended saccharin with a small amount of aspartame; this is the formula that is currently marketed in North America.^{[citation needed]}

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 It was withdrawn after less than a year.

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.^[2]

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!" It was also mentioned in Back to the Future.

In Popular Culture

• Bill Pullman's character in the film Zero Effect consumes nothing but tuna fish straight from the can and Tab.
• In the movie The Jerk, Navin R. Johnson's favorite beverage is Tab.
• In the movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin stays up all night drinking Tab and watching a recap of the years he was frozen.
• In the movie Back to the Future, when asked for a drink order, Marty McFly says "Ah, yeah...Give me a Tab." The clerk replies, "Tab? I can't give you a tab unless you order something."
• In the movie Starsky and Hutch, Hutch's cure for a hangover is "a little flat Tab".
• In the episode of The Simpsons titled "King-Size Homer", Homer presses the tab key on his keyboard, in the hope that "TaB" will be dispensed from his PC.
• In Jonathan Coulton's song: "Code Monkey", Code Monkey "like Tab and Mountain Dew."
• In "Shaggy Busted", an episode of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.
• In the movie Scrooged, as Frank Cross he mixed tab with vodka.
• In "Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7 Episode 20, Buffy asks her neighbor "Got a tab?"
• In Bobcat Goldthwait's stand-up comedy routine, he chain-drink cans of Tab. At some point, he stops, reads the can, and proclaims that it has the same ingredients as battery acid.

Slogans

• 1966: "Be a Mindsticker"
• 1968: "The Now Taste of Tab"
• 1972: "Where There's Tab, There's Refreshment"
• 1974: "A Beautiful Drink for Beautiful People"
• 1975: "When It's Hard to Get Started, Start with a Glass of Refreshing Tab"
• 1976: "The Hit That Saves The Day"
• 1978: "One Calorie, Beautiful"
• 1982: "Great Taste, Low Calorie"
• 1983: "Crisp, Resfreshing, and Satisfying"
• 1986: "Tab's Got Sass"

Other Tab brands

• Tab Clear
• Tab X-Tra
• Tab Energy

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} Product Descriptions: Tab from a Coca-Cola corporate website
2. ^ ^{a b c} Cult sodas with a history: Tab, from the October 2009 issue of Fortune magazine
3. ^ From an article published in the May 1962 issue of Atlanta Magazine
4. ^ The Real Risk of Saccharin from March 10, 1980, The New York Times

External links

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