Right: BFDI and II creators answer fan questions at the 2025 tour.
Despite taking a whole 15 years to qualify for a Wikipedia article, Jacknjellify has made impressive public outreach for an indie animation studio started by two 12-year-olds. They started with an online merch store right before the three-year hiatus, selling basic merch like shirts, buttons and notebooks. During season 4a in 2019, the team collaborated with Scholastic to make the Battle for Dream Island Official Character Guide, an officially published book. Around the same time, the first BFDI character plushie of Firey was released, and today there are plushies of over 20 different characters.
The first official in-person fan meetup happened in New York City in 2016, one month after the release of season 3's only episode. Since then, annual meetups have happened mostly in California, pausing only in 2020 and 2021 for the pandemic. Starting in 2018, the meetups became crossovers with Inanimate Insanity, the second most popular object show after BFDI. The 2023 meetup, relabeled as an "experience," was held in both Los Angeles and New York City, taking place in a theater and premiering a new episode of both shows with a creator Q&A session afterward. 2024 ramped it up even more with a six-city tour in New York, Houston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and Ft. Lauderdale. Since BFDI was running two seasons at once, the first three cities had a season 5 premiere, and the last three cities had a season 2 premiere. All six cities got the same Inanimate Insanity episode. 2025 had the same thing, except II premiered two episodes like BFDI did.
In recent years, the Jacknjellify crew has made a name for themselves in the public space in a few other ways. Starting in 2023, the crew rents physical office space in Santa Monica, California, to optionally work in during the summer. After a failed attempt in 2019, Jacknjellify managed to get a panel at VidCon 2025, where they premiered a new episode. The show itself has had several guest characters voiced by popular Internet personalities like TomSka, Schmoyoho, jacksfilms, musician Kevin MacLeod, and even comedian Rosie O'Donnell due to her child Clay being a BFDI fan. Most recently as of this writing, Jacknjellify struck a deal with AMC, Cinemark, Marcus, and independent theaters to premiere a pivotal episode in 170 different locations around the United States for one night only on October 16, 2025, the day before it's released on YouTube. Who knows what will happen next for BFDI!