Tab Clear

by Coca-Cola

1992 – 1994 GONE FOREVER

Gone — Tab Clear was pulled in mid-1994 after roughly eighteen months, having achieved its actual objective. Coca-Cola has never revived it, which is unsurprising for something engineered as a weapon rather than a beverage.

Coca-Cola's entry in the brief and baffling clear cola war: a colorless diet cola launched in late 1992 to go head to head with Crystal Pepsi. It lasted about eighteen months, which was precisely the plan.

🧾 One more thingCoke's marketing chief Sergio Zyman later described Tab Clear as a kamikaze product — built to fail, designed to make clear colas read as diet drinks, and intended to drag Crystal Pepsi down with it. It worked. Both were gone by 1994, and Zyman counted his own product's death as a victory.

Filed under: Drinks & Sodas · the ’90s

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