The internet can serve as a museum, preserving digital artifacts that allow us to reminisce about previous eras. The days of blinking text and flashing .gif details seem like ancient history now in the age of Flash websites and embedded streaming video, even though the first round of poor web design emerged barely a decade ago. The Wayback Machine is an awesome way to browse sites as they were years ago, but some websites simply sit without updates for years. Promotional sites for movies are especially prone to being hosted long past their time. 

The first movie ever to use the internet for promotion proved that the newfangled technology of the time was actually an incredibly effective tool to stir the attention of potential viewers. The movie was Star Trek: Generations. Its website was viewed millions of times, even when fewer than a million Americans even knew how to hook up a modem. 

Some primordial websites of films from my childhood still remain online, their producers shelling out a few dollars a year to make sure they stay live. I'm not sure why, but online promotional materials for the first Pokemon movie are still up in their entirety. Against flashing .gif backgrounds, you can select your favorite Pokemon, read up on the history of the film, even browse a Flash Pokedex. Maybe Warner Brothers figured a kid-friendly interactive website might still help cue in new subscribers to their brand. Maybe they're automatically paying for a domain they've forgot about (the copyright hasn't been updated since '99). Either way, the site's a hilarious testament to how we browsed the internet way back in the day--and the kinds of bad movies so many of us went to see. Pokemon's not the only one--the half-animated classic Space Jam still has a Warner Brothers-funded website up, complete with frames and low-quality jpegs.

Most movies have their promotional materials removed after a reasonable period of time, but I'm sure there are more fossils out there ready to be discovered by the aspiring web archeologist.