Tech

Finally, a Taco: The Best and Worst of the 37 New Emojis

Finally, our prayers have been answered.

No more emergencies

Videos by VICE

or needless bloodshed

will come as a result of not having a tiny, cartoon symbol for tacos, burritos, or unicorns.

Unicode released its annual update to the language today, adding 37 new emojis to the list of characters. They won’t appear on your phone yet, because each operating system uses its own designs to correspond to the Unicode characters (that’s why Android emojis don’t look like Apple emojis). But you can be sure most companies are always designing new characters for upcoming OS updates.

As an emoji aficionado and the self-appointed emoji beat reporter at Motherboard, I decided to break down my favorite and least-favorite of the new additions. Here is a highly-subjective list of the top five and worst five new emojis:

Best New Emojis

5.

The hockey stick and puck: as a Canadian, I can tell you this emoji was more coveted by Canucks than the Canadian flag emoji. And I think other nations watch hockey sometimes, too, so that’s cool.

4.

Champagne bottle with popping cork: right now, the celebratory emojis are limited to a single red balloon and a weird horn with confetti flying out of it. Worst. Party. Ever. We needed a poppin’ bottle desperately.

3.

Robot face: the robots are coming whether we’re ready or not. Maybe if we have a friendly, cartoon character robot face with which to communicate with them, they won’t kill us all.

2.

Unicorn face: this is actually probably not very useful, but whatever. There are two dragon emojis, we can have one unicorn.

1.

/

Taco/burrito: there is going to be a taco emoji and a burrito emoji, in part thanks to a Taco Bell petition that got more than 30,000 signatures. These are clearly the most important emoji additions to date, but don’t make me choose a favorite of the two.

Worst New Emojis

5.

Badminton racket: this is barely a sport, and it was added at the same time as hockey? I’m just saying, any sport children play on a beach at summer camp should be a lower priority.

4.

Money mouth face: according to Emojipedia, this will basically be a smiley with some green cash stuffed in its mouth. I am not sure what this is supposed to symbolize, other than a poor understanding of how disgustingly unhygienic cash is.

3.

Nerd face: in case you missed it, nerds are cool now. Aren’t we past this archaic representation of what a nerd looks like? Okay, we do wear glasses a lot but most of us don’t have bunny teeth.

2.

Face with head bandage: they introduced a face with thermometer, which I like because I’m often sick. But I don’t often have head injuries so I’m kind of meh on the bandage emoji.

1.

Amphora: as in the Greek water vessel. As in a really big jug. As in what in the holy hell is this needed for? Are there many people having extensive emoji conversations wherein they need to reference the astrological sign of Aquarius?