Tab Zero vs Crystal Pepsi

Credit to Chuck Klosterman for telling this story best (see his book, The 90s).

Crystal Pepsi was a huge fad in the 90s. You couldn't have a party without someone asking for it to be brought. It was just Pepsi without the colored syrup added.

Coca-Cola started to panic. And so they did a kamikaze move and put their least popular drink, Tab on the chopping block. They introduced Tab Zero, positioning it as a diet drink, and knew it would be on the shelves right next to Crystal Pepsi. It was never meant to compete, it was meant to fail and take Crystal Pepsi down with it. And it worked.

Sergio Zyman, the head of marketing for Coca-Cola said, "“This is like a cola, but it doesn’t have any color. It has all this great taste.  And we said, ‘No, Crystal Pepsi is actually a diet drink.’  Even though it wasn’t.  Because Tab had the attributes of diet, which was its demise. That was its problem. It was perceived to be a medicinal drink. Within three or five months, Tab Clear was dead. And so was Crystal Pepsi.”"