I’m not a fan of either, to be honest. And if they’re going to the trouble of importing actual, brewed-in-Australia beers to the US, I would have thought they’d go with something like Crown Premium Lager, Toohey’s New, or even VB. You know, popular beers that lots and lots of people here actually drink. 
Why?
This is international brand marketing. CUB, as it was then, looked at it’s stable of brands and selected Fosters as it’s international flagship. It simply couldn’t have been Calton Draught, Melbourne Bitter or Victorian Bitter.
There has never been any survey results that indicate that Crown, Tooheys or VB for that matter are more accepted in international tasting panels. The very nature of the “internationally accepted taste” and the corresponding marketing plan were likely to cause it’s local demise. I’d reckon if they had chosen Crown it’s sales would have fallen away locally in much the same manner.
Can you name an Australian food/beverage brand that’s a market leader here and is established in the US market? Hell, the US market doesn’t like Tim Tams.
Yes, Fosters does not rank in Fosters Brewing’s Top 10 sellers in Australia. There is no reason it needs to. The fact that it doesn’t allowed Fosters to sell off the brand to keep the company going. Pragmatic business.
FWIW, a commentary from Trevor O’Hoy, ex CEO of Fosters Brewing.
Personally, I can’t recall drinking it in 25 years. My preference runs to the James Squires stable or to the Coopers family.
Fosters isn’t the ultimate marketing gimmick that Yanks just can’t see. After all, Fosters really is an Australian beer.
The real winner is Outback Steak House.
What about Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Olivia Newton-John, and Naomi Watts? None of them originally from Australia.
Nicole Kidman was born a dual U.S.-Australian citizen, because her parents were Australian. Olivia Newton-John moved to Australia at the age of 6 – I’m not sure if she or her parents were ever naturalised as Australian citizens, but they might have been.
(I knew Olivia NJ’s father quite well, and nearly got to meet her when she was aged about 15 and singing in a coffee shop in Melbourne.)
Yes. What are you referring to?
I have encountered that too. Aussies seem to think that we Poms are crazy for Fosters lager, and they can’t wait to tell us that nobody drinks it in Australia. There was a heavy marketing campaign for the brand here in the 80s, which may have given the impression to visitors that it was extremely popular, but really it’s just one of many brands of mass-market lager. Most of it is made in the UK anyway, so what’s the difference?
True Australian Fosters is primarily the stuff brewed in the US.
Castlemaine XXXX was the brand that I remember being most heavily promoted then. “Australians wouldn’t give XXXX for anything else”, as wife and kids fall into gully. At the time it was brewed in Alloa. It wasn’t even the worst beer brewed there at the time, but close.
But Nicole Kidman was born in Hawaii.
So she’s a Kenyan.
Because James Boags and Coopers don’t taste that nice (IMHO) and, in my experience working in bottle shops and hospitality, aren’t that popular? Obviously people buy them, but compared to the quantities of the other stuff it was in pretty small amounts. Certainly, if I was in charge of the Australian Beer Export Board James Boag’s and Cooper’s wouldn’t be on the shortlist of “Beers to Export In Commercial Quantities”- I’d have things like James Squires’, Hahn Super Dry (or Toohey’s Extra Dry), and Crown Premium Lager there instead.
I’m not a marketing expert but it would seem to me there’s no reason you couldn’t just market the stuff “As-is”- “Crown Premium Lager; the Premium Australian Lager People In Australia Actually Drink”. Also, the “Made From Beer” Carlton Draught ads would work just fine overseas as well, I think.
Milo springs readily to mind. I don’t know about the US but it’s available all over South-East Asia and many, many other countries (including New Zealand, the UK, and South Africa), according to Wikipedia.
Oh yeah, Milo is big in Thailand. Good stuff that, better than Ovaltine.
It’s not that we don’t like them. It’s that we don’t like paying six-to-eight bucks for a package of cookies.
Milo is Australian? I always thought it was a Latin American product.
Fosters is just a mass-market, generic lager, that happens to be made in Australia, and has a big can.
It is just like Budweiser (AKA “sudsweiser”).
A beer to drink cold, without much flavor or character.
It’s originally Australian, developed in the 1930s.
Yes – and they are plotting to make her the first Australian President of the US. It’s the great Kenyan-Hawaiian conspiracy.
Funny thing about Corona – I had it in the can, where the stuff doesn’t get the chance to skunk in the sunlight as it does in the clear bottles. Turns out that skunking was a good part of the unique flavor of Corona. In the can, it tastes like many other flavor-less American brews.
There would be a few Australian wines too. Jacobs Creek frinstance, or is that only Europe.
Our local Outback had Tooheys New for awhile, but they’ve stopped carrying it.
Milo is available in our local Kroger, but it’s in the Mexican food section (??).
I would agree with the Australian wine. Yellow Tail is probably the most mass-marketed, popular one, but Jacob’s Creek, Penfolds, and some other big brands are readily available.