It is possible for a long forgotten project to do well after a long time. This has once happened to me with an airdropped I received from coinmarketcap some year back. This coin was dumped but I decide to leave it. It was so surprise to check my wallet and see this project has done well. This is why you should not abandon your wallet with some coin no matter what. There are some people who received BTC in those day but we're unable to access their wallet where it was stored till date.
What project was this? But it's true that if there is a rebranding, it's the second chance that will be given by investors to that project and if it didn't do any good. It's best to leave that project and forget about that coin.
On the good side, you'll never know what a project will bring us because if there's some tokens or coins that have a working developers. They can make things unexpectedly good just as what happened to you.
And I congratulate you with that because not everyone who gets into airdrop ends up with that good result just as you've said and what happened to you.