Tab (stylized as TaB) was a diet cola soft drink produced and distributed by the Coca-Cola Company. It was introduced in 1963 as the company's first diet drink, and was produced until its discontinuation in 2020. Several variations were made, including a number of fruit-flavored, root beer, and ginger ale versions. Caffeine-free and clear variations were released in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and a Tab-branded energy drink was released in 2006, though it used a different formula from the standard cola.
Following studies in the early 1970s that linked saccharin, Tab's main sweetener, with bladder cancer in rats, the United States Congress mandated warning labels on products containing the sweetener. The label requirement was later repealed when no plausibility was found for saccharin causing cancer in humans.
Tab was popular among some people throughout the 1960s and 1970s as an alternative to Coca-Cola. It did not gain much attention in international markets, however. Tab's popularity declined after the Coca-Cola company's launch of Diet Coke in 1982.
History
Tab was created in 1963 by Coca-Cola after the successful sales and marketing of Diet Rite cola, owned by the Royal Crown Company. Previously, Diet Rite had been the only sugarless soda on the market. Tab was marketed to consumers who wanted to "keep tabs" on their weight.
Coca-Cola's marketing research department used its IBM 1401 computer to generate a list of over 185,000 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. Of a final list of about twenty names, "Tabb" was chosen, influenced by the possible play on words, and shortened to "Tab" during development. Packaging designer Robert Sidney Dickens gave the name the capitalization pattern ("TaB") used in the logo as well as creating a new bottle design for the soft drink.
For a time in the 1970s, Coca-Cola introduced six variety flavors of Tab (all of which were also sugar-free): Root Beer, Lemon-Lime, Ginger Ale, Black Cherry, Strawberry, and Orange. Tab Clear, a caramel color-free version of Tab, was released in the United States in 1992, and subsequently in the United Kingdom and Japan, in order to confuse consumers into thinking the new rival Crystal Pepsi was a diet cola and thereby limit its appeal. Tab Clear was discontinued in 1994. After the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a ban on cyclamate in 1969, sodium saccharin was used as the beverage's primary sweetener.
In the absence of further evidence that saccharin caused cancer in humans, the substance was delisted in 2000 from the U.S. National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens; this led to the repealing of the warning label requirements for products containing saccharin. In December 2010, the United States Environmental Protection Agency removed saccharin from its list of hazardous substances.
Availability
Tab's popularity began to decline in 1982 with the introduction of Diet Coke, although Tab retained something of a cult following in the United States, where customers purchased about 3 million cases in 2008. In 2011, the Coca-Cola Company reported that it produced approximately 3 million cases of Tab that year (in contrast to 885 million cases of Diet Coke).
As of June 2021, Tab was still available at Coca-Cola stores in Atlanta, Orlando, Las Vegas and select Georgia locations.
In 2021, a group of Tab soda fans created the Save Tab Soda Committee.
Variants
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! style="width:10%"|Name
! Year<br />launched
! Notes
! Picture
! class="unsortable"|
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| Tab
| style="text-align:center;"| 1963
| Original flavor. Sweetened with cyclamate-saccharin mixture upon release, but cyclamate was removed after 1969, and saccharin was the principal sweetener. In 1984, Nutrasweet was introduced to the formula.
| 100px
| align=center|
|-
| Tab Lemon-Lime
| style="text-align:center;"| 1970s
|Lemon-Lime flavored diet soda; sold for a time in the 1970s alongside other diet drinks using the Tab name. This is a predecessor to Sprite Zero, by which it likely was replaced.
|
| align=center|
|-
| Tab X-Tra
|style="text-align:center;"| 1994
|A Norwegian version of Tab with a different name, made to compete with Pepsi Max in the country. It was also sold in Sweden and Finland, but the drink was discontinued in Sweden in 2007 and discontinued in Finland at an earlier date. After 2007, it was exclusively sold in Norway until it was discontinued in 2021.
|
| align=center|
|-
| Tab Energy
|style="text-align:center;"| 2006
|A Tab-branded energy drink which uses an entirely different recipe from the cola. It was also sold in Mexico, New Zealand and Spain, where it is called Tab Fabulous.
|100px
| align=center|
|}