I believe the global economy crashed around the late 1990s when everyone in the entire world realized they Gotta catch them all. Nintendo released the first Pokemon game for the Game Boy in 1996 for Japan and 1998 for North America in an attempt to conquer the world. And they have almost succeeded. The Pokemon franchise is second only to Mario in sales of games and has expanded to almost every conceivable medium from anime to comics to card games to fanny packs and underwear. The games themselves foster a completist’s frenzy as gamers are charged with finding all the Pokemon hidden in the world. The original game had 151 Pokemon to collect, but you needed two versions of the game to find them all. The recent Pokemon Pearl and Diamond have upped that number to 493 Pokemon with different genders and colors, allowing for hundreds more to collect resulting in mass absences from elementary schools. Gotta catch them all.