Ah, memories. The labels you've been mentioning got traded back and forth among a small group of regional brewers that eventually morphed into enormous holding companies that drove many of the labels into the ground. Some, like Falstaff, used to be top-sellers and continue to have regional good will. Those that survive are licensed to local brewers for continued production and aren't owned by their founders, except for Yuengling. (Almost all of them were at one point owned by the same holding company that bought Pabst in the mid-'80s.)
Check
this site for a reliable history of brand consolidation and demise.
Is Lowenbrau now made by the same people who brew it in Europe? Over there, it's
not a shitty beer, but Miller got the license and made it famously badly for a while. I'd like to have the street cred of ordering something that sounds like cheap American shit, but I don't want the bad drinking experience of actually drinking a shitty beer. If Lowenbrau is now imported, it sounds like the perfect candidate.
