LAist drinks: Tab energy

David Brown, the former host of the public radio show Marketplace, was an avid Tab drinker. When he left the LA-based show for Texas, empty Tab cans were left with sad staff as personal momentos. Turns out his Tab habit wasn't an eccentricity: it was a journalistic tradition. The New Yorker wrote last month of an elite group of talented, powerful journalists who all cherished their low-cal pink '70s beverage. All of them were thrown for a loop by the newly remixed Tab.

As bloggers are considered, eh, new new journalists, or psuedo-journalists, or just plain new(ish), we found it our duty to try Tab in its new incarnation, Tab Energy.

The can is skinny like Red Bull's and it's got 95 yummy grams of caffeine. (Red Bull has just 80. Wimps.) So we pop it open and it tastes ... pink. It really does. We tried to figure out how something tastes pink. With Tab Energy, the taste is sweet and a little tangy, part ginger, part citrus, with a soft fizzle of carbonation. And just like the '70s Tab, it has a bit of an icky aftertaste, not quite metallic, but one that definitely reminds you it's a diet drink (5 calories). It was, we decided immediately, yucky.

But we soon found ourselves having another sip. Because while it was diet-drink yucky, it was also kind of good. Kind of not bad at all. A third sip and despite ourselves, we were hooked. Ready to proclaim that new Tab Energy is the drink of the new new journalists. It's a little bit gross, but it's kind of great, too.

Now we're hoping that Coke doesn't get all crazy and decide to remix ...again.