tab's popularity began to decline in 1982 with the introduction of diet coke, although tab retained something of a cult following in the united states, where customers purchased about 3 million cases in 2008. in 2011, the coca-cola company reported that they produced approximately 3 million cases of tab that year (in contrast to the 885 million of diet coke). john sicher, editor of "beverage digest", commented in 2013: