With their family complete, the group must contend with human interference in their habitat, such as chicken farms and snowmobiles, and struggle against the debilitating cold of winter.

[5] The film was shot over a period of four years near Kitami, Kushiro, Abashiri, Monbetsu, and Koshimizu along the Sea of Okhotsk coast of Hokkaido.

[3][4][5] It was later broadcast on Fuji Television's "Golden Western Movie Theater" program on August 10, 1979,[6] garnering a viewership rating of 44.7%.

[7][8] The Glacier Fox aired 24 times on the Disney Channel from 1984 to 1986, and was distributed on American VHS in 1985 by Family Home Entertainment.

[9] In 2013, 35 years after its initial release, the film was digitally restored and re-edited, incorporating different voice actors for the foxes' thoughts and new music, as well as previously unreleased footage cultivated from 100 hours of unused material.

He chose to juxtapose images of the disaster-stricken areas with the original story of foxes surviving the frozen Hokkaido landscape.