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Tab, Coca-Cola’s Diet-Soda Pioneer and a ’70s Icon, Is Going Away
- bookofjoe 6y agohttps://archive.vn/myiP5 https://archive.vn/myiP5
- kalium-xyz 6y agoIs that URL by chance?
- dkdbejwi383 6y agoNever heard of it before now. I guess it was available in the USA only?
- tibbydudeza 6y agoAccording to wikipedia the Southern African countries got a different variant. "Tab uses a different recipe compared to Spain and the U.S., where it's a caffeine-free drink, and uses less carbonation."
- petepete 6y agoIt was definitely around in the UK for a short period in the 90s under the name Tab Clear. As I recall, it wasn't very popular.
- Nursie 6y agoIt was a novelty when I was a school kid. Clear cola! Of course we were drinking it out of cans so that aspect of it didn't really have lasting appeal...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dagw 6y agoI vaguely recall it in Norway in the mid/late 80s. But I haven't seen it for decades.
- Chernobog 6y agoIn Norway, what we have today is something called TAB Xtra: https://www.coca-cola.no/content/dam/one/no/no/products/tabxtra-nocalories-500ml-productflavourpopup.png https://www.coca-cola.no/content/dam/one/no/no/products/tabx...
- djxfade 6y agoDo they still sell that? I can't remember seeing that around since the early 2000s
- vidarh 6y agoIn recent years it might have been very limited. It used to be very widely available in the 70's and 80's.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoLou: "Are you gonna order something, kid?" Marty: "Gimme a Tab" Lou: "A tab? I can't give you a tab unless you order something" --Back to the Future (1 not 2) That was a bit of an obscure joke at the time, watching from Europe. Edit: Oh my, I had the movie part wrong!
- 4ggr0 6y agoThat's true :) Both tabs are pretty much unknown in europe.
- bbarnett 6y agoBack to the Future #1, my sartorially inclined friend. ;D (He stayed clear of Lou's the second time around.)
- Nursie 6y agoAnd as the exchange continues - Marty: "Alright, give me a Pepsi Free." Lou: "You want a Pepsi, PAL, you're gonna pay for it." And nobody in the UK had ever heard of that either... all in all a confusing scene :)
- Shivetya 6y agoLikely, I just recall one aunt who drank this exclusively and the cans of Tab were all hers. It was my first taste of a sugar free soda and she had nothing to fear from us after we each were given a glass. For the most part in the early seventies soda was a treat unlike today where I swear it replaces water for some people. lets just say its an acquired taste and note that diet soft drinks did not have the selection there is today
- dkdbejwi383 6y agoWhat is the flavour? Is there something it can be compared to?
- bbarnett 6y agoYes. Take a tea bag. Use it 10 or 20 times to make tea. Once done, leave it damp to collect mold, dirt, fungus. After, once dried, clean it with bleach in an attempt to kill the mold, fungus, and other such things. Now quickly, with the bleach still dripping from it, run tepid water through it. Add brown food colouring. I'm not sure, but this seems to be what Tab is.
- jfengel 6y agoIt's a cola, and its flavor overlaps heavily with Diet Coke; indeed, it was Diet Coke before Diet Coke. The flavor profile was tweaked around the saccharin sweetener they had to use when it was introduced. The flavor difference is on par with the difference between Coke and Pepsi: real and detectable, but all pretty much the same if you're not paying attention. Especially since Tab no longer uses saccharin alone.
- derbOac 6y ago"Though Diet Coke all but eclipsed Tab, the beverage company kept the throwback brand alive. The reason was customer relations. Tab fans were relentless, calling Coca-Cola headquarters and signing petitions if they couldn’t find their soda. 'We want to make sure those who want Tab get Tab,' Douglas Daft, Coca-Cola’s then-chairman and chief executive said in 2001, when Tab’s market share had fallen below 1%. 'It shows you care.' " Sweetened with saccharine, described as having a metallic aftertaste. I have had it but it's been awhile and I don't recall it well. My sense of the fan base is similar to what is mentioned in the article, that it had sort of a cult following. I'm surprised the company stuck with it so long. It makes me wonder if there's some genetic studies of taste preference it might have inspired.
- RikNieu 6y agoWe still have it in South Africa. I prefer it to Coke Zero ect, it tastes more caramelly
- tpmx 6y agoIIRC the taste is similar to Pepsi Max (Europe/Asia).
- supernova87a 6y agoLet's just say, it unwittingly created its own reputation, before ultra Xtreme hardcore to-the-max branding kicked in to the soda market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9YLQTgQ7B4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9YLQTgQ7B4
- howlgarnish 6y ago> I say to them: ‘Come on the journey with us to what’s coming next in the reduced-calorie segment.' If there was a contest for the least appealing appeal ever, this would be pretty high up there. Anybody up for joining the "reduced-calorie segment"?
- lgbr 6y ago> Anybody up for joining the "reduced-calorie segment"? In all seriousness, yes, I'm actually thrilled at the continued prominence of sugar-free drinks. We still have an obesity epidemic going on, and sugar-free drinks to me seem like a true have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too offering. Having people switch from sugary sodas to their sugar-free equivalent seems like the easiest win to improve health. I get the argument "Just drink water", but do the people making that argument really think that everyone is going to do this? And why should we anyway? Research continues to show that artificial sweeteners are harmless, and drinking soda is just plain fun.
- treeman79 6y agoSugar substitutes promote weight gain. Also a good trigger for migraines.
- lgbr 6y agoThis is something that really needs a source, because after a ton of searching, all of the analysis that I can find refutes this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4135487/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4135487/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28394643/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28394643/
- jskdvsksnb 6y agoAnecdotally, a lot of people I know who have trouble losing weight drink diet soda. I don't know what mechanism would cause that, but metabolism and satiety are complicated enough that I could believe there's a correlation. I'm lucky that artificial sweeteners taste disgusting to me anyways.
- raverbashing 6y agoWasn't Tab made purposefully bad in order to sabotage the corresponding Pepsi product?
- eesmith 6y agoAccording to https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/keeping-tab/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/keeping-tab/ - no. > In 1962, Coca-Cola launched a crash program code-named “Project Alpha” to develop a competing diet cola [to Royal Crown's Diet-Rite Cola] and bring it to market in less than a year. The goal was to produce a low-calorie cola drink using saccharin and cyclamates instead of sugar while avoiding the typically unpleasant aftertaste that plagued other diet sodas. Coca-Cola met its goal with the introduction of TaB in May 1963, a diet cola advertised with the slogan “How can one calorie taste so good?
- someperson 6y agoYou're thinking of Tab Clear vs Crystal Pepsi [1] [1] http://mentalfloss.com/article/547246/why-coca-cola-designed-tab-clear-fail http://mentalfloss.com/article/547246/why-coca-cola-designed...
- bigbassroller 6y agooh no! My first paid gig was http://ilovetab.com http://ilovetab.com. Had to start somewhere...
- mprovost 6y agoAny good stories?
- wdb 6y agoPersonally, I hope they don't stop selling the normal Coca Cola but my gut feeling they will even more force Zero or Diet coke on us. And then just say Coca Cola is going away in a few years. I prefer the taste of normal Coca Cola as Zero or Diet taste metallically. I think we had clear Coca Cola for a short while when I was a kid but it dead a silent death just like that 'green' Coca cola they introduced a few years ago.
- Hnrobert42 6y agoTab represented 0.01% of their revenue, and they are just now cutting it. I think regular Coke is safe.
- gremlinsinc 6y agoYeah, cause sugar addicts are - you know gonna kick the addiction and make it unsustainable for Coke or Coke is gonna do the right thing and take out sugar for the betterment of society, just like Heroine dealers are gonna find out it's bad for their customers and killing people so they're gonna sell safer alternatives to street drugs /s Edit: Sorry if this seems snarky, not my intent, but to be clever/witty in stating that Coke will never end it's Sugary drinks. That's their $$$ cow.
- ybalkind 6y agoI just drank a Tab. Can still on my desk https://imgur.com/a/hFo0Gl7 https://imgur.com/a/hFo0Gl7 I'm in South Africa.. I generally chose it over the other diet Cola drinks.
- RickJWagner 6y agoTab and Fresca were two of the biggees back in the day. I guess these will be textbook icons for marketing books.
- RoutinePlayer 6y agoTo be replaced by Caps Lock cola
- boulos 6y agoI'm surprised nobody mentioned that "All this computer hacking is making me thirsty. I think I'll order a Tab" [1] will no longer make sense :). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6-DgWeuos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6-DgWeuos
- cyrrus 6y agoUnless they’re a Silicon Valley burner... except for the thirsty part I suppose