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Taco Bell's Fighting The Good Fight To Get Us A Taco Emoji
We've all been there: that moment when you've just noshed on a stellar taco and search for a taco emoji on your smartphone to share your experience with a friend or through social media. But it's not there, and you go back to eating your delicious taco feeling defeated. Well, that's where Taco Bell is stepping in—to try to get us the taco emoji we so sorely need.
The Irvine-based fast food chain launched a Change.org petition just a couple of months ago to get Unicode Consortium—a non-profit group in charge of standardizing computer text, including other things like emojis—to add the coveted taco emoji to its list of new adds in mid-2015. So far, they've garnered over 22,400 signatures and just need a little over 3,500 to go.
In November, Unicode Consortium released a list of 37 potential new emojis that could be gracing our lives soon, but so far, these ones are just candidates in an intense emoji race. It's not clear how many they'll be choosing. Some of the ones in the food category include the taco, burrito, hot dog, popcorn, turkey and cheese wedge, which we're not going to lie—we would probably use all of these emojis on a regular basis. It's so hard to choose.
Taco Bell does pose some important questions:
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Why do pizza and hamburger lovers get an emoji but taco lovers don’t? Here’s a better question: why do we need four different types of mailboxes? Or 25 different types of clocks? Or a VCR tape and floppy disk emoji? No one even uses those things anymore.
The taco emoji Taco Bell seems to be pushing on their Change.org petition seems to bear a striking resemblance to their Crunchy Taco Supreme, made with a hard taco shell, with ground beef, sour cream, lettuce and tomatoes. If we had a say in this taco emoji, we'd like ours to look like a soft-shell taco with carne asada, and topped with onions, cilantro and salsa.
And we're sure you're just as curious as us as to what other emojis are being considered right now. They include face with head-bandage, robot face, hugging face, crab, nerd face, mosque, menorah, Buddha, unicorn face, and cricket ball with bat. For a full list of the emojis, visit the Unicode Consortium's blog here.
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But the game has changed: Congress voted to eliminate funding for public media across the country. Here at LAist that means a loss of $1.7 million in our budget every year. We want to assure you that despite growing threats to free press and free speech, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust. Speaking frankly, the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news in our community.
We’re asking you to stand up for independent reporting that will not be silenced. With more individuals like you supporting this public service, we can continue to provide essential coverage for Southern Californians that you can’t find anywhere else. Become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission.
Thank you for your generous support and belief in the value of independent news.
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