Soda & Soft Drink Saturday – TaB

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday - TaB

Tab (stylized as TaB) is a diet cola soft drink produced by The Coca-Cola Company, introduced in 1963. The soda was popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and several variations were made, including Tab Clear as well as caffeine-free versions.

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday - TaBAs a result of studies in the early 1970s linking 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 The label requirement was later repealed when no evidence was found linking saccharin with cancer in humans.

After its introduction in 1982, Diet Coke quickly replaced TaB as the Coca-Cola Company’s most popular diet cola, although TaB still retained a loyal following. Approximately 3 million cases were sold in the United States in 2008


TaB was introduced as a diet drink in 1963. TaB was created 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.

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday - TaB

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. From a final list of about twenty names, “Tabb” was chosen, influenced by the possible play on words, and shortened to “TaB” during development.

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday - TaBPackaging 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.

TaB has been reformulated several times. It was initially sweetened with cyclamate. After the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a ban on cyclamate in 1969, sodium saccharin was used. Studies in laboratory rats during the early 1970s linked saccharin with the development of bladder cancer.

As a result, the United States Congress mandated that further studies of saccharin be performed and required that all food containing saccharin bear a label warning that the sweetener had been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals. In the absence of further evidence Soda & Soft Drink Saturday - TaBthat 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.

At the height of its popularity, the Tab name was briefly extended to other diet soft drinks, including TaB Lemon-Lime, TaB Black Cherry, TaB Ginger Ale, TaB Root Beer and TaB Orange.

Other variants of Tab have appeared over the years

Caffeine Free TaB was introduced in the 1980s with little fanfare and disappeared soon afterward.

In 1992, Coca-Cola released TaB Clear in the U.S., Australia and UK. It was withdrawn after less than a year.

TaB Energy is an energy drink released in early 2006 that uses a different recipe than Tab cola.

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday - TaB

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. According to the Coca-Cola Company, in 2012 TaB was being sold in the countries of the Southern African Customs Union (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland), Spain, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the United States.

Text from Wikipedia

The History of Babycham


The name has always been misleading – the ‘cham’ part leads many people to assume that the bubbly liquid they are happily quaffing at parties is champagne, when in fact this popular drink is actually perry; alcoholic sparkling pear juice. This confusion actually led to a more babycham_06serious altercation between the Babycham Company and the gourmand Raymond Postgate. The founder of the Good Food Guide, a once-a-year publication dedicated to searching out the best eateries in the UK, wrote an article in a 1965 edition of Holiday magazine claiming that his readers should know that Babycham looks and is served like champagne, but is actually a pear- based drink. Babycham sued Postgate for libel, stating that he had inferred that the company were trying to pass the drink off as something it wasn’t. Whilst the judge assigned to the case agreed that the wording was derogatory it was agreed that it could be passed as ‘fair comment’ and Postgate walked from court with no punishment.


Largely remembered as a popular 1970s and 80’s drink, Babycham actually hit our shelves and bars in 1953 and had the honour of being the first booze to get a commercial aired on UK television. It almost single-handedly changed UK drinking culture by marketing itself directly at women, targeting them with their first specific ‘ladies’’ drink. Its history actually starts back in the 1940s, however.  

babycham_07Shepton Mallet in Somerset was home to the brewery belonging to the Showering brothers (I promise there will be no jokes about how clean they must have been), Francis, Ralph, Herbert and Arthur. Alongside the normal beer they also produced mineral water and cider and Francis spent time searching for new drinks to bring to the market. He looked into the fermentation of fruit juice, originally to improve upon their cider-making process but as he researched the topic he discovered that he could also make a great tasting beverage from perry pears.

After trying it out in the Bristol area as a test at first, their new alcoholic drink was bottled in 1950. It began its life in large bottles but was later swapped into the familiar small (‘baby’) ones that became its trademark.  It was first sent out under the name of Champagne de la Poire but after winning first prize in every important agricultural show in the country people started referring to it as the ‘Baby Champ’. (See where they went from there?)

babycham_05The Showerings had hit upon a real gap in the market. Up until then the drinks aimed towards women were few; stout, port and lemon, gin or sherry perhaps? Showering’s new sparkling perry was an ideal creation to fill that gap. It could be marketed as a light, fun drink specifically for females – and the cute little deer logo, which appeared on the bottles for its launch in the UK in 1953, just added to that appeal.

In 1957 it made its television commercial debut. It was an example of a truly aspirational brand; its strapline was ‘The genuine Champagne Perry’ and it was shown being drunk in saucer style champagne glasses by stylish and alluring women. The commercial was a success and Babycham’s popularity soared. The little Shepton Mallet brewery had to rapidly expand to keep up with increased demand; the campaign to introduce pear perry to a new (and obviously enthusiastic) audience had worked.

The decades rolled by and the success story continued. The drink and the deer became world famous and the ‘Babycham Babe’ beauty competition was launched in the 1960s. The adverts gained a guest appearance from Patrick Mower (Emmerdale) in the 1970s and further references to the ultimate in cool lifestyles (‘Hey, I’d love a Babycham!’) in the 1980s. Later on the image of the deer was turned into a cartoon; it became a party deer, able to bring a bit of pizzazz to the dullest of social gatherings.


By the 1990s though, the brand was losing ground. By now there were plenty of other cheap and ‘fun’ alcoholic brands on offer and a restriction on television alcohol advertising made it harder for the company to retain their status within the market. In 1993 the brand relaunched, aiming to target a more youthful consumer and a few years later there was a, possibly misguided, attempt to bring the ‘Babycham Babe’ contest back to life. babycham_08(A West End final crowned model Nell McAndrew the winner in case you were curious.)

The millennium saw a new ‘Popping Cork’ bottle added to the brand.

Dogged determination meant that the name survived, and even began gaining in popularity again. The sudden fashion for retro enabled Babycham to become stylish again – even having a regular night held in its honour at Browns’ nightclub in Covent Garden, London.

A range of clothing was launched in 2001; people could now celebrate their love of fizzy perry pear by wearing underwear, outer clothing and accessories adorned by the blue bow-wearing deer.  These caught the eye of the fashion press and Babycham found itself receiving some positive media attention.  A new range of shoes and matching bags came along in 2011.


In 2003 Babycham celebrated 50 years of bubbly pear goodness and also began sponsoring the Funny Women Comedy Awards and ten years later Diamond Anniversary commemorative Babycham glasses could be snapped up with their special pack promotion.

By 2011 Babycham was selling around 15 million bottles a year and two new flavours have been introduced, with an emphasis on its 1950’s heritage: ‘hint of cream soda’ and ‘hint of cherry soda’. Yum.

Text from

When I went to England as a young man back in the very early seventies all decent girls drank Babycham. The ones I dated drank vodka straight or gallons of bitter

Winking smile

A Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails Ya

An article by Mary Miley Theobald at history.orgA Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails Ya

Some historians think that chocolate drinking spread from England to its North American colonies, but it seems more likely that it came directly in ships that plied the trade routes from the West Indies to the major colonial ports of Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Newport, Rhode Island. Whatever the route, chocolate arrived in English North America at about the same time it arrived in England. It was available as chocolate nuts, as shells, and in processed “chocolate cakes,” lumps of grated powder and sugar ready to be stirred into boiling water, mixed with whatever ingredients one preferred, and frothed with the little hand mill.

A Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails Ya

Those who bought the cacao seed had to roast and grind the chocolate themselves or, more likely, have their servants or slaves do the tedious job. Those who, like Martha Washington, purchased the cacao shells, steeped them in hot water to make a thin chocolaty drink that was easier on the stomach than oily chocolate.

According to Jim Gay, most chocolate was processed in the northern colonies, in New England, Philadelphia, and New York. It was sold in its various forms in general stores and grocers’ shops. In pre-Revolutionary Williamsburg, unsweetened chocolate went for about two shillings sixpence per pound, slightly more than a free unskilled laborer or sailor earned in a day. Obviously, few of those men drank chocolate. Prices fell, however, and by the nineteenth century, it had become cheap enough to be given to slaves.

A Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails Ya
Nobilities drinking chocolate in Mrs White’s Chocolate House in London.

Its perceived medicinal value made chocolate a natural product for apothecary shops. It was considered nourishing for the sick as well as an aid to digestion and was believed to promote longevity, help lung ailments, energize the body, cure hangovers, suppress coughs, and, as mentioned, stimulate the libido. For that reason, the Virginia A Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails YaAlmanac of 1770 cautioned women against it, warning “the fair sex to be in a particular manner careful how they meddle with romances, chocolate, novels, and the like,” especially in the spring, as those were all “inflamers” and “very dangerous.”

“This was very much ignored,” Jim Gay says. “Women were the main consumers of chocolate. Children were denied chocolate because it was a stimulant.” But it was this sexy reputation that caused chocolate to become associated with love, Valentine’s Day, sinful pleasures, and decadence.

Ben Franklin recommended chocolate as a cure for smallpox in Poor Richard’s Almanac of 1761; Doctor Benjamin Rush did the same in his A Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails Yamedical texts. Thomas Jefferson thought chocolate would overtake tea and coffee as the American beverage of choice. In a letter of November 27, 1785, to John Adams he wrote, “The superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain.” In this he was mistaken. Chocolate drinking would soon decline in favor of chocolate eating.

By the late eighteenth century, a very few, very wealthy Americans were eating chocolate as food. Not the creamy sort of milk chocolate candy bars we know today—those would not exist until the nineteenth century—this rather gritty chocolate was shaved and cooked into puddings, pies, and tarts and served as a side dish at dinner. It was also mixed into creams and ice creams and almond-shaped candies and served at the finest tables as part of the dessert course.

A Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails Ya

North America’s first cookbook, printed in 1742 in Williamsburg by William Parks, publisher of the Virginia Gazette, contained but one chocolate recipe: “chocolate almonds.” The list of ingredients included A Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails Yano almonds; the word merely reflected the shape of the chocolate, which was mixed with sugar, orange flower water, and a binder. Today we might call it a chocolate drop.

Gay’s research turned up other Virginia chocolate recipes in manuscript form, sometimes written by an unknown housewife. One of these mixes sugar, chocolate, and almonds, then directs the cook to use cochineal to color them red, saffron for yellow, “Stone blew” for blue, and “the Juice of Spinage” for green. Gay calls this “the eighteenth-century ancestor of M&Ms.”

A Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails YaChocolate did not really become a food until the middle of the nineteenth century. The pivotal date was 1828, when a Dutchman, Casparus Van Houten, invented a machine for manufacturing powdered low-fat cocoa. Chocolate beverages became easier and cheaper to make, leading to what some have called the democratization of chocolate.

A Cup of Hot Chocolate, S’Good for What Ails Ya

In 1847, an English chocolate maker that had been in business almost a hundred years, J. S. Fry and Sons, developed the first molded chocolate bar. A Swiss, Henri Nestlé, figured out in 1867 how to make powdered milk by evaporation, and another Swiss, Daniel Peter, came up with the idea of blending Nestlé’s powdered milk with chocolate in 1879. The milk chocolate candy bar was on its way.