Dragonite’s Amada Sticker and the Pokemon Boom of 1997

Dragonite No.352: An Amada Pokemon Sticker from 1997

A Licensed Sticker from Pokemon’s Earliest Days

This is a rectangular paper sticker with a white border, produced by Amada under an official Pokemon license. The front carries the Pokemon logo in Japanese, an illustration of Dragonite, and Japanese text — including a phrase that translates roughly to “There’s an even stronger Dragonite!” alongside the notation “LV.59,” written in the voice of an anime narrator calling out a Pokemon mid-battle. The number 352, printed in the lower left, is the sticker’s designation within Amada’s series; it is not Dragonite’s Pokedex number, which is 149. The sticker also displays the numbers 325 and 518, and while these almost certainly reflect Amada’s internal numbering system, their precise meaning — whether sequence position, print variant, or something else — isn’t definitively documented.

Dragonite in the Original Generation

Dragonite, known in Japanese as Kairyu, is Pokedex #149 and the final stage of a three-step evolution: Dratini develops into Dragonair, then into Dragonite. It is a Dragon and Flying type, and among the original 151 Pokemon, it ranked near the top in base stats outside of the legendary Pokemon — putting it in the tier later fans would call “pseudo-legendary.” Its rounded, orange-bodied silhouette and small blue wings give it a more approachable look than its sleeker pre-evolutions, but the Pokemon anime reinforced its power through episodes that cast it as a guardian figure of the seas. That anime launched in Japan on April 1, 1997 — the same year this sticker was produced — making the “LV.59” framing on the sticker very much a product of the moment: the show was new, battle terminology was exciting, and Dragonite was already among the most talked-about Pokemon in the game.

Amada and the Japanese Sticker Tradition

Amada was one of Japan’s leading manufacturers of licensed anime character stickers through the 1980s and 1990s, producing sets for Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Dragon Quest, and eventually Pokemon. The collecting culture that made this market possible traces back to 1987, when Lotte’s Bikkuri Man stickers — packaged with wafer snacks — caused a phenomenon among Japanese schoolchildren that cemented the idea of character stickers as something to seek out, trade, and collect. Amada’s Pokemon stickers followed that tradition directly, sold at candy stores, convenience stores, and supermarket toy sections, often bundled with small snacks or sold in bags. The 1997 production date places this sticker in the very first wave of Pokemon licensed merchandise: the video games had launched in Japan in February 1996, the anime debuted in April 1997, and the franchise didn’t reach North America until 1998. Printed entirely in Japanese, for a domestic Japanese market, this sticker exists from the window when Pokemon was still a local phenomenon — before it became a global one. For international collectors, that distinction between early Japanese domestic goods and the licensed products that followed overseas is a meaningful part of what these items represent.