nablabs
no alcohol beers and low alcohol beers

The two women questioned had little knowledge and no inclination to learn about nablabs.

Instead they seek positive promotion, new reasons to drink nablabs that will make them feel good'.

According to industry estimates, sales of nablabs last year were down by 25 per cent overall on the previous 12 months.

And, as if the taste wasn't bad enough by itself, the early marketing of nablabs made matters worse.

So it is hardly surprising that nablabs are seen merely as a distress purchase.

In several European countries, notably Germany, nablabs have established themselves strongly as brands.

According to Allied research, consumers 'understand the role of nablabs and don't want to be preached to.

Total on-trade beer sales were down eight per cent as a result of the recession, with nablabs having fallen by 20 per cent.

I would never drink them out of choice, and anyway the hangover just isn't worth it,' says Steve, a 35-year-old sculptor who drinks nablabs 'fairly regularly'.

'Swan Light reduced its price from 52p to 32p a can and it performed the best of the nablabs, even out-selling Kaliber,' she says.

The technical procedures involved in nablabs - using specialised yeasts or 'reverse osmosis'- cannot please all the partisan regional palates all the time.

Drunk with optimism and keen to combat an overall drop in beer consumption, brewers in the late Eighties hailed nablabs as one of the growth markets of the future.

The popular press had laid the blame for the evolution of the larger lout squarely at their feet; pushing nablabs would allow them to appear as capitalists with a social conscience.

Advertising then moved on to emphasising the safety element of nablabs (as an alternative to alcohol for drivers), effectively saying to consumers 'when you can't have a proper drink, have this instead'.

The idea that drinking nablabs was a seriously smart thing to do ant that hordes or women would subsequently fall at one's feet probably looked great on a storyboard but it failed to impress the punters.