"Tab" is "Bat" Spelled Backwards

And the makers of Tab (see below) deserved the same punishment dished out to the Coca-Cola vending machine, administered by Colonel Bat Guano.

Let's face it. Diet sodas of the 60's-70's were what you drank if there was absolutely nothing left to drink and you were just dying for a soft drink. Often you would raid your friends refrigerator hoping to score a Pepsi or a Sprite or 7up only to find bottles of Diet Rite or Fresca or worst of all - Tab.

It's surprising how popular diet sodas were in the 60's-70's - given their awful taste, and especially as the labels sometimes said.....:

"Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals."

But the Wagners cooler had Tab, as well as other diet soft drinks of the era including Diet Pepsi, Fresca, and Diet Rite. To my discerning taste buds, Diet Rite was the best of the "faux colas", and Fresca was the most drinkable of them all.

I found this interesting history of Tab soda here.

The development of Tab - which was the first major diet soda, is an interesting one. The story began in 1958 when diet soda controlled merely 1.5% of the soda market. By 1962, this percentage had doubled. Coca-Cola decided that it was time to get involved. The development of Tab began in June of 1962. The workers had until April 1, 1963 to have the drink, its bottle, and its brand identity ready for market.

After hundreds of taste tests, researchers narrowed the choices for flavor down to two. They sent the candidates to families around the country to find the one people liked better. Naming this new drink was also a problem. Market research said the name should be something short and easily remembered (three to six letters). They configured an IBM 1401 computer to print all four letter word combinations that had a vowel. This generated over 250,000 words; they also added names suggested by employees. Coca-Cola narrowed the list to 600 possibilities and checked each of these against existing trademarks. By the time of the final selection, there were less than two dozen choices left. TAB was the final choice.

The original Tab bottle was a complete departure from all the previous bottles. They wanted a completely radical design, but it had to be compatible with all of the automated equipment in use at the time (bottle fillers, packagers, vending machines, etc.). It had to be "unique but the same." A textured bottle was the final decision. Although this took some engineering skill to design, the bottle was also ready by the deadline.

In short - after years of product development, consumer research and taste testing, Coca-Cola came up with the foulest tasting swill ever to be placed inside a bottle and sold as "soda".

As I would not part with precious money to actually buy a diet soda at Wagners (why would any sane kid do so when he/she could gulp down a delicious sugar-laden bottle of Pepsi or Dr Pepper?), my first encounter with diet sodas came from hanging out at a friends house during long hot summer vacations. He and his family were all overweight so his parents always had diet soda in the refrigerator while we, if we had soft drinks in the house, always had the good stuff - Weis markets, A-Treat, and other low-cost generic brands (but which tasted fabulous!).

So if we wanted a soda at my friends house it had to be Diet Rite, Fresca, or Tab. Punished by the heat, weakened by thirst, we would grovel and drink (or at least, try to drink) a bottle of Fresca or Tab. I quickly learned Tab was bitter and essentially undrinkable. My scrounged from the refrigerator drink of choice fell to Fresca. Fresca had a surprisingly palatable and decent citrus/lemon-lime type taste. And the saccharine after taste was short-lived and somewhat masked by the flavor.

Obviously, Wagners patrons were like me, they seldom parted with their hard earned cash to buy a Tab or Fresca out of the Wagners cooler. This was evident by the disproportionate number of diet soft drinks crammed into the cooler. Also - many of these were covered with a thick layer of frost - a 60's-70's era form of carbon-14 dating indicating the length of time the diet sodas sat in the cooler. A very long time indeed.