A Metal Slime Sticker From the Height of Dragon Quest Fever

Metal Slime No. 017 — Enix Character Sticker, Dragon Quest Monsters (1998)

This is a character sticker card published by Enix in 1998 — numbered 017 within a larger series drawn from the Dragon Quest Monsters monster roster. The card identifies Metal Slime by its in-game family classification, Slime Family, and features a small blue circular badge bearing the number 5 in the lower right corner. Whether that badge marks a price tier, a pack grouping, or a rarity designation isn’t fully clear from the card itself.

A Numbered Card in the Tradition of Japan’s Sticker Culture

The 017 notation immediately signals that this is one piece of a larger set — designed, like most Japanese character sticker series of the era, to be collected in full. Numbered collectible stickers were a staple of Japanese toy and candy culture from the 1980s onward, circulating through dagashi-ya (small snack and novelty shops), sold as blind packs, or bundled with food products. By 1998, the trading-card boom sparked by Pokemon had reinforced the numbered-series format across children’s collectibles broadly, and serialized sticker sets were common across virtually every major game and anime IP in Japan. A number like 017 was a built-in reason to seek out the others.

Metal Slime — Dragon Quest’s Most Notorious Encounter

Metal Slime has been part of the Dragon Quest series since Dragon Quest II in 1987, and its reputation has barely changed since. Visually, it is a metallic, silver-gray version of the franchise’s slime mascot: the same teardrop silhouette and simple black dot eyes, shifted to a liquid-metal finish. Gameplay-wise, it is designed to be nearly impossible to hit, fast to flee, and almost invulnerable by conventional means — but defeating one yields an experience-point reward far larger than almost any other encounter in the game. That combination of near-impossible odds and outsized reward has made Metal Slime one of the most talked-about enemy designs across the franchise’s long history, familiar to international players through releases like Dragon Quest XI in Western markets as well as four decades of domestic entries.

All Dragon Quest monster designs, including Metal Slime, were created by Akira Toriyama — the artist internationally known for Dragon Ball. Following Toriyama’s death in March 2024, interest in his work across both franchises has grown considerably among collectors and fans worldwide, and pieces connected to his creature designs from the 1990s carry that personal artistic history.

Dragon Quest Monsters and the Game Behind This Sticker

Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry’s Wonderland launched for Game Boy Color in September 1998 — the same year this sticker was produced. The game starred Terry, a character from Dragon Quest VI, and centered on capturing and breeding monsters into a combat team, a concept that rode the monster-collecting wave Pokemon had set in motion two years earlier. It was a major hit in Japan and later reached North American players in 2001 under the title Dragon Warrior Monsters, giving the game an established audience outside Japan as well.

At the time of this sticker’s production, Enix was still an independent company — the merger with Square that created Square Enix did not happen until 2003. The sticker was most likely produced to coincide with Terry’s Wonderland’s release, though the precise distribution channel — whether sold individually, packaged as a blind assortment, or included with a food product — is not documented in the available records.