I'll Pick Up the Tab...at Jewel!

Here’s a Chicago-area night scene from the late 1960’s as depicted in a Foster and Kleiser promotional photo. Foster and Kleiser was a major outdoor advertising company. The billboard shown was hand painted, as many were as late as the 1980’s. Before that time, it was a very common thing to see billboards in various states of completion as one drove by.

The product advertised was Tab, a sugar-free cola drink introduced in 1963 by The Coca-Cola Company to cash in on the “dietetic” craze. For decades, Coca-Cola refused to attach their main brand name to anything but their flagship product, for fear that a flop would tarnish the Coca-Cola name, so “Tab”, a name selected by the company’s IBM computer, would be it.

The only time I ever drank Tab was at the home of my grandmother, who was a mild diabetic. She seemed to always have a few six-packs of the (by the 1970’s) pink-colored cans with the funky logo on hand. It had an oddly addictive taste, provided you were able to get used to it in the first place.

Sales of Tab nosedived in the late 70’s when the U.S. Government forced the placement of health risk warning labels on any product containing saccharin, Tab’s artificial sweetener. The warning requirement was finally lifted in 2000, and saccharin-sweetened drinks were declared A-Ok for everyone except extremely thirsty laboratory animals. By this time though, Coca-Cola had long since reversed its product naming policy and introduced Diet Coke, a wildly successful product by any standard. (Thanks to the annonymous commenter who pointed out that even Diet Coke initially contained saccharin. Within the first year or so, they switched to a saccharin/aspartame blend, then to all aspartame in order to be able to use the "100% Nutrasweet" tag.) Tab was relegated to the status of hard-to-find cult favorite. With a very cool logo.

And yes, Diet Coke was an early example of the fine art of “brand extension” - spinoff versions of successful existing products. Without it, we may have never seen the likes of “Frosted Golden Mint Oreo Cakesters (with Double Stuf!)” or similar essentials. I shudder to think of it.

Six paragraphs in, let’s not forget the main reason for inclusion of this photo on this website – the supermarket, of course - and a very fine looking Jewel Food Store it is. This store is circa very late 50’s, after Jewel had switched from masonry pylons to I-beam supported tower signs. The “three-quarter” angle shows the reflective glint of the store’s porcelain-paneled exterior very nicely. The accent strip along the roofline was composed of orange glazed tile.

The stars were exceptionally bright (and pointy) that night.