1870 – 2020retired
50/50 (soft drink)
“Half grapefruit, half lime, all Midwest — gone in one piece after a century and a half.”
“First diet cola, last to the door. The can has no warning label for heartbreak.”
TaB arrived in 1963 as Coca-Cola's first diet drink, and for fans in the 1960s and 1970s it became a beloved alternative to Coca-Cola itself. It stuck around through fruit, root beer, and ginger ale variations, plus caffeine-free and clear versions in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It even endured the early-1970s saccharin scare and the mandated warning labels, which Congress later repealed when no link to cancer in
TaB's fortunes dimmed after Coca-Cola launched Diet Coke in 1982, and it never found much love in international markets. The company kept producing it in the United States, but in considerably smaller quantities than its mainstays, until discontinuing it in 2020. Fifty-seven years is a long run for a soda that was always someone's favorite and never the company's.
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“Half grapefruit, half lime, all Midwest — gone in one piece after a century and a half.”
“A pie with ambition: even McDonald's couldn't keep New Zealand from loving it.”
“Squeezed fresh, laid to rest in a boardroom.”