Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
TAB Cola
This week we read that TAB Cola will no longer be
manufactured. This comes as a surprise to most of us, who didn’t know it still
existed.
TAB Cola, a product of the Coca-Cola company, dates back
to ye olden days of the IBM Selectric Typewriter, Sears, and Chesterfield
cigarettes at 10 cents a pack.
The first and maybe the only TAB Cola I drank was at Dr.
Moore’s office after getting a shot for something or other when I was a barefoot
lad. Yes, I was an anti-vaxxer, but I was only ten years old. Either Coca-Cola
or a distributor had given Dr. Moore, of happy memory, a case or two, promoting
TAB as a health drink because it contained artificial sweeteners instead of
sugar.
In those days, when Studebakers still roamed the earth,
TAB came in a glass bottle with sharp serrations so you wouldn’t drop it. The
design of its last container clearly dates from the late 1960s or early 1970s, a
bright purplish-red can with ‘way-cool happenin’ lettering. The container
itself would be worth keeping as an artifact of its time.
Another surprise is that Coca-Cola’s awful Fresca drink
still exists. That is inexplicable, because I don’t know that anyone ever
finished a Fresca. For a time I was stationed at the last outpost (kinda like
that Ronald Reagan movie, only with boats instead of horses and swamp instead of
desert) on this side of the Cambodian border.
Because we were at the end of the supply line we received
only whatever had not been taken off the boat by the previous posts. They got
the Coca-Cola and we got the Fresca.
We threw the Fresca over the wire to the children, who
promptly threw it back with some language that was probably rude.
We often shared our food with them, but their reaction to
the ham-and-lima-beans in C-rations was pretty much the same. But they weren’t
doing without; it was ironic to see a ten-year-old smoking Marlboros when the smokers
among us couldn’t get any cigarettes at all. Some Navy storekeeper back down
the river probably paid for a new car to be waiting for him stateside with his
profits from the black market.
But the Fresca was always safe.
CNN (yes, yes, I know...) says (Coke killed Tab soda. Meet the superfans trying to save it -
CNN) that Coca-Cola offers hundreds of different brands of
belly-wash, and most of them just don’t sell well. They have to go.
Maybe the last cases of TAB will be delivered in AMC
Pacers or Ford Pintos.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment