Filly Funtasia Episode Nominated at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival

In a bit of unexpected news, the Filly Funtasia episode “The Missing Student” has been nominated in the “Best Animation” category of the 58th Asia-Pacific Film Festival, which will be held on the 1st of September in Taipei, Taiwan.

(EDIT: Turns out we lost! "Fundamental" was the winner of the category.)

The episode in question, in case you don’t remember, is the one with the blue rainbow and the scene where Rose, Fabian and Zack walk through a cave. The fourth promo consists entirely of a long scene from this episode. You can also see snippets of the episode in the third and fifth promos, and we have also been able to see concept art from the episode in art posts.

Filly Funtasia’s competitors are “Funtamental” from Taiwan, and “Adi Sopo Jarwo” from Indonesia. The first one appears to be a short chaotic one minute video with an anti-religious message (I think? It’s not entirely clear what’s going on) while Adi Sopo Jarwo is also a 3D cartoon. Both are embedded below if you want to check out the competition.

We should find out if Filly Funtasia is Taiwan’s number one in a couple of days from the posting of this article, and then we’ll hopefully be able to write an update about Filly Funtasia winning awards even before its release.

Dracco Sells UK Branch

In another piece of news about the companies involved in Filly Funtasia, Dracco has sold its UK branch, Dracco UK, a company which primarily functioned as a toy distributor for non-Dracco toys.

The enterprise in question began as a UK toy distributor called The In Thing. In 2011, Dracco acquired 50% of the company and in 2014, Dracco bought the remainder of the company, redirecting its former website, theinthing.com, to dracco.co.uk.

On the 16th of July, Dracco officially sold Dracco UK to Cathryn Dunstan, who is a member of their management team. The company was renamed Bliss Distribution Ltd, and dracco.co.uk now redirects to blissdistribution.co.uk.

Dracco UK never actually sold any Dracco properties from what we know, and indeed sold the properties of their main competitors. According to an interview in Toyworld Magazine, Dracco co-founder Henrik Andersen says: "The sale supports Dracco’s strategy to focus on its core business and increase our investments in brand development and global sales of our Dracco branded product range.".

While not mentioning Filly by name, this is a vaguely encouraging sign for the franchise’s future considering how Filly is currently Dracco's main property and thus the likely target of a focus on Dracco's brand development.