Tab

When I was in high school and college, I always had a Tab in my hand. I LOVED Tab!!!! Tab is now relatively expensive and I had not had one in quite some time but I recently treated myself to a 6-pack. It tasted exactly like I remember it!

The Coca-Cola in the USA website says that this sugar free drink, launched in 1963, was one of the first ways consumers could get “tabs” on their diet. Tab was the Coca-Cola Company’s first sugar free drink and set the stage for the wave of diet colas that followed. Today, the pink can is still a distinctive statement. Tab has achieved a retro pop-culture status and has the reputation of being somewhat hard to find. I've been able to find it regularly at my neighborhood Kroger.

Tab was the second diet soft drink, after Diet-Rite Cola. After being very popular in the 80s, Tab seemingly faded into oblivion even as diet soda finally made it into mainstream culture.

According to Wikipedia, the legend that TaB stands for Totally Artificial Beverage is unfounded and inaccurate ("natural flavors" are listed in the ingredients roster on each case, can and bottle). 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 capitalization pattern ("TaB") in the logo he designed.

Here are some websites if you want to find out more about my favorite diet soda:

http://www.ilovetab.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_soda