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Aargh. The drink has had a small but loyal following. Around here it doesn't get much shelf space but is among the first to sell out if the store has a B2G1 or especially a B2G2 sale on 12-packs of cans (they haven't had the 2L bottles in years). Diet Coke has been bigger and has gotten much more marketing support since 1982, but TaB retained a following.
Tab is one of several "underperforming" products Coke has said it is eliminating from its brand lineup by the end of the year as the company seeks to streamline production and focus on bestsellers.
Well, you won't sell very many if you make very few and haven't had advertising support since the 1980s.
I think it would have had a few more years left, at least, were it not for the pandemic and the general trend of offering a lot less variety now. YMMV by city, but the only flavored diet drink they have left around here is vanilla Coke Zero. No other variants for Coke Zero or Diet Coke (only for the HFCS sugared drinks).
From
Wikipedia:
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.
[9] 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. The reasoning to TaB was not just limited to randomization, the acronym also accounted for the market position of the company as 'Tasty aerated Beverage'.
[10]
I thought it stood for "Totally artifical beverage." Learn something new every day.
They've had it since 1963 and it was their first diet drink, coming after RC Cola's Diet Rite. At least around here you can still get the Diet Rite and taste-wise it might be the closest thing to TaB left.