What Cecil forgot to mention is that Tab is the flavor of Satan’s ass, while Diet Coke is slightly more palatable, though with definite hints of battery acid.
Is Tab still available (in the U.S.)?
I haven’t seen it in Canada since I was a kid.
– A
Just to save the mods the trouble, here is the column being referred to.
To be fair to Cecil, he did mention “Tab’s bizarre petrochemical taste.”
For my money, the best diet soda I ever had was Diet Rite. (In particular, the raspberry stuff used to be good.) It always kind of mystified me, though; the cans had prominently written on them something to the effect of, “No sodium, no sugra, no calories, no caffeine.” So what is in it? It’s a big ol’ can o’ nothing, is what it is.
RR
First off, I swear Diet Coke™ appeared in 1981. I remember it showing up at while I was at a particular dorm cafeteria at Northwestern. It could have been fall of '82, but spring of '81 seems to ring truer. It definitely wasn’t the 81-82 school year.
Perhaps it was being test-marketed there earlier, perhaps I misremember.
The key factor in the creation of Diet Coke was Nutrasweet™. Tab was a saccharin-based product, and Coke had no desire to mess with a successful product (which they evidently forgot when the created New Coke™/Coke II™ years later). So their first aspartame-based soft-drink came out as Diet Coke because of its alleged flavor match with The Real Thing™.
Tab remained with saccharin for years, and maintained itself as a sorority-house staple. So far as I know, it still is. But I have no idea, since I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. I don’t even like Diet Coke much. To me, a Coca-Cola™ purist, Diet Pepsi™ is the best of the sugar-free colas – and there’s a reason for that.
I work for the company that bought the company that bought the company that sold off the Nutrasweet company, and a scientist there explained part of the mystery of aspartame’s flavor: it’s activated by acids, especially citric acid. Pepsi products have always had a somewhat lemony taste to them, compared to the delightful pine-caramel of Coke, and it ‘goes better’ with Diet Pepsi to my tastebuds. That’s why it also works extremely well on berries, grapefruit, etc.
That’s also why I’m happier with the slightly-fruit-flavored colored water such as Diet Mountain Dew™ or Diet Cherry 7-Up™. But if I splurge on the caloric stuff, Coke is It™.
A quick web search turned up this Tab FAQ
It says, among other things:
I should have included this with my last reply:
Shouldn’t the fact that Tab contains saccharin have been mentioned. Diet coke was made later with Nutra sweet(aspertame). This seems like a huge distinction and would be reason enough to keep the two around. If this was mentioned, in cecil’s column, I’m sorry, but i couldnt find it anywhere. There was also a failure to mention that some people are turned off by saccharin because of the massive warning that come printed with it(like on Sweet N Low Packets)…such as cancer in animals and what not. So, I guess what I’m getting at is that if some asked me what is the difference between tab and diet coke, i would say saccharin and aspertame.
Diet RC is flavored with Sucralose (aka Splenda), a non-nutritive sweetener that some people prefer over either Saccharine or Nutrasweet.
I still see Tab from time to time in the NY area. I agree with Humungus – a key difference between Tab and DC is the sweetener, and that seems like a, well not an error obviously, but a significant oversight on the part of the Perfect Master.
I am glad the saccharine vs. nutrasweet has been covered somewhat. What makes the marketing a science was when Coke had two products in this sub-catagory the stores had to keep both on the shelf and tehreby give Coke more shelf-space than othres (read Pepsi). More shelf-space (called facings) means more sales. Later on the saccharine scare and the market dominance of Diet Coke pushed Tab out of the way. Tab is occaisionally available here in Atlanta. I buy some when I can.
I just wonder whether the saccharine is less dangerous than the nutra-sweet?
Ah, that must be why I think Diet Coke with a twist of lemon is the best tasting cola, ever (even compared to the sugared real things).
Peace.
It’s the real thing… compared to what?
I can’t remember when I last saw it either. Welcome to the boards Askew.
Tab was briefly marketed in the UK as a clear (ie, no caramel colouring) drink, and it was, too. Apparently, it was going to compete with Pepsi Clear, which never appeared at all.
I’m not really sure Tab was ever released, either - my step-dad was in charge of sorting the can design out for production, and was my ‘source’.
It tasted like a ‘lighter’ version of Diet Coke (my choice of caffeine addiction), to me. I quite liked it.
I sent the Tab vs. Diet Coke article to my mom…she’s definitely on board with the saccharine/aspartame idea. Her response:
Son, Listen to your Mother, the world’s leading expert on Diet Coke and Tab. It had NOTHING to do with advertising or with Pepsi, it was all science. The artificial sweetener in Tab (which I’m sorry to admit I’ve forgotten the name of) was declared to cause cancer in rats if they drank a vat of it every day. The FDA, against my protest, since at the time I was a devoted Tab drinker and cared more about my daily fix than about the possibility of getting cancer (yes I was a freshman in college at the time) made Coke take it off the market. At the time, it was the only diet drink without saccharine, which really tasted bad. Since then, they have seen the error of their ways and decided no one, not even me, could drink enough to cause a problem. And that’s the truth. Love, Mom
As an advertiser, I have to take issue with the “nothing to do with the advertising” stance, but it does seem to definitely boil down to the content of the swill…
It was probably sweetened with acesulfame K, which as the K in its name suggests is a potassium salt, rather than a sodium salt like many other sweeteners.
All this discussion about the sweetener seems to miss the point that it would have been simple to start making TAB with aspartame. Marketing has to have been the main issue.
Tab was the Coca-Cola Company’s original diet soda (came out in 1963), and has it’s own wonderful flavor. And, despite the report linking saccharin and cancer, Tab was never pulled off the market. You’d have to drink a stupid amount of the stuff (read: gallons) to equal the amount they were force feeding those rats.
I had a two-can-a-day habit for about ten years until our local distributor stopped carrying it. You have no idea how excited I get when I go on vacation and find it on supermarket shelves.
Frankly, the stuff is kind of addictive. Although I will admit that most of my friends think its disgusting
I won’t even get into Tab Clear . . .
Diet Coke was an attempt to make a (inferior) sugar free version version of an already established product years later.
I leave you with:
http://home.epix.net/~tjwagner/tab.html#abouttab
But then it wouldn’t taste like Tab anymore. Saccharin and aspartame aren’t the same thing. Things sweetened with aspartame are far, far sweeter than those flavored with saccharin. And not in a good way, in my opinion. That’s the problem I have with Diet Coke.
Quite the contrary. Since the consumers wouldn’t let Coca-Cola improve the flavor of their main product, they instead made a new product with the improved flavor. unfortunateson aside, most folks don’t like for their soft drinks to taste like pine tar, but the typical consumer is a stickler for tradition.
See Snopes for more info.
Here in Norway, the Coca-Cola Co. sells a product called TAB X-tra. It’s sweetened by Aspartame and Acesulfame K, and it tastes very much like Diet Coke - with a little less chemical aftertaste. TAB X-tra is only sold in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland…