The Tamagotchi is a keychain-sized virtual pet, released by Bandai in Japan in November 1996, whose egg-shaped digital creature must be fed, cleaned and entertained or it dies. Its designers, Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai, were originally aiming at a wristwatch-style gadget, and the egg shape may have been chosen to resemble a pocket watch. Bandai first marketed it to teenage girls, and demand far outstripped supply, so staff were even banned from carrying bags with the company logo for fear of theft. The craze faded by 1998, leaving unsold stock that cost Bandai 6 billion yen, but the brand was revived in 2004 with a more cautious launch.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.