Chimaera and the 1998 Dragon Quest Monsters Sticker Series

1998 Enix Dragon Quest Monsters Chimaera Collector Sticker

A Numbered Sticker From the Dragon Quest Monsters Launch Year

This is an official Enix collector sticker depicting Chimaera, released in 1998 to coincide with Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry’s Wonderland. The design places the monster against a yellow background inside a blue circular border. Two green banners carry classification details: the upper left reads “Tori-kei” (bird-type), Chimaera’s monster category within the game, while the lower left bears the name and the number 72. A badge in the lower right marked 18 likely indicates a sheet or pack number within the wider series, though its exact meaning is uncertain. A compass-style symbol in the upper corner appears to be a series or brand logo.

The numbered, encyclopedia-style format is characteristic of character sticker sets that circulated in Japan through the late 1980s and 1990s. Type labels, collection numbers, and set-spanning organization were standard features, built so collectors could track exactly which entries they had and which remained. The specific distribution channel for this sticker — snack product, single-sale, or otherwise — is not confirmed by available information.

Chimaera’s Place Across the Dragon Quest Series

Dragon Quest Monsters is an Enix spin-off RPG in which players recruit, raise, and breed monsters. The first title, Terry’s Wonderland, launched on Game Boy Color in Japan on September 25, 1998 — the same year as this sticker — and later reached North America as Dragon Warrior Monsters.

Chimaera has appeared in Dragon Quest since the series’ first game in 1986, making it one of the franchise’s longest-running monsters. Akira Toriyama — the artist behind Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump — designed it: a bird-headed, winged creature with a worm-like body and a white feathered ruff at the neck, loosely drawn from the Chimera of Greek mythology but wholly his own. In Dragon Quest Monsters, Chimaera is classified as a bird-type and functions as breeding material within the game’s system. The number 072 on this sticker likely corresponds to the monster’s in-game encyclopedia entry, though exact numbering can vary between versions.

Many players associate Chimaera less with combat and more with an item that shares its name: the Chimaera Wing (called Wings of Wyvern in some translations), a consumable present across virtually every mainline Dragon Quest title that instantly returns the player to the last visited town. It is one of the franchise’s most consistent recurring items.

The Enix Era and Toriyama’s Ongoing Significance

Enix merged with Square in 2003 to become Square Enix, so any product bearing the Enix name was produced before that transition. This sticker’s 1998 date places it in the original Enix era, when Toriyama was actively shaping the franchise’s visual identity — and before Dragon Quest merchandise carried the combined company’s branding.

Toriyama passed away in March 2024 at age 68. Interest in the full range of his output — including Dragon Quest material from the 1990s — has grown considerably since. A numbered Enix sticker from 1998, featuring one of the series’ oldest monsters in his design, represents a documentable moment in that creative history.