Inside the 1998 Dragon Quest Monsters Gremlin Sticker

Gremlin No. 140: Official Dragon Quest Monsters Sticker, Enix 1998

What This Sticker Is and Where It Comes From

This is a square-format official character sticker released by Enix in 1998, tied directly to Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry’s Wonderland, the monster-raising RPG spinoff that launched on Game Boy Color in September of that year. The design follows a clear pattern common to Enix’s official merchandise of the period: dark background, radiating gray lines, and a purple ring frame around the central artwork. In the lower-right corner, a red circle marked 25 indicates this sticker’s position within a larger set — a number managed separately from the monster’s in-game encyclopedia entry. The sticker’s text itself reads “140 Gremlin ♀,” explicitly stating the monster’s catalog number, name, and sex designation, which mirrors the game’s own internal data.

Gremlin, the Demon Family Monster and Toriyama’s Hand

Gremlin is a recurring monster across the Dragon Quest series, present since the franchise’s early years. In Dragon Quest Monsters it carries the catalog number 140 and belongs to the Demon family (Akuma-kei), indicated by the trident icon in the sticker’s upper-left corner. The character’s look — compact, pink, bat-winged, with pointed ears, exposed fangs, and a lolling tongue — is immediately recognizable as the work of Akira Toriyama, who served as monster designer for the entire Dragon Quest series. That combination of simple silhouette, expressive face, and slightly unsettling energy runs through dozens of his designs. Toriyama passed away in March 2024, which has deepened collector and fan interest in official merchandise bearing his original artwork.

Dragon Quest Monsters itself built its identity around Terry, a character from Dragon Quest VI, and introduced monster-breeding mechanics that set the spinoff apart from the main series. Terry’s Wonderland went on to anchor a long-running sub-franchise, with later titles eventually reaching audiences outside Japan.

Japanese Sticker Culture and the 1990s Game Merchandise Wave

In Japan during the 1980s and 1990s, character stickers were a genuine collecting category — the Bikkuri Man sticker boom of the late 1980s had already established the format as something actively sought by kids, not just picked up by accident. By the mid-1990s, game franchises had moved firmly into the space. When Pokemon launched in 1996 and demonstrated the commercial force of monster-collecting RPGs, publishers including Enix expanded their merchandise programs accordingly.

Stickers like this one circulated through toy shops, bookstores, and convenience stores as sheet-sold or individually sold products — a distinct category from capsule toys or food-packaged premiums. The “No. 25” designation implies a multi-monster release drawn from a roster of more than 200 creatures, though the full scope of the original set is not confirmed. This item was produced under Enix license while the company still operated independently, before its 2003 merger with Square. For international collectors, that context matters: it represents a purely domestic Japanese product from a specific, now-closed chapter of the franchise’s history.