Heroes, Villains & Redheads Make Emoji Debut

Those with red hair, white hair, curly hair or no hair at all are finally recognized in the latest ‘official’ emoji update. Superheroes and villains also make an appearance.

The latest Unicode Emoji update takes effect tomorrow and hair makes up almost a third of the 161 new entrants. The range includes the four new hair variants in male and female forms, both with five skin tones and the standard yellow (which covers two different haircuts, or two headshapes for the bald version). Unfortunately for little orphan Annie and River Song, the curly variant is only available for brown hair right now.

Meanwhile the ‘person-fantasy’ section covers three designs each for male and female superheros, two of them in multiple skin tones. The battlefield is evenly balanced with exactly the same set-up for the supervillains.

Science also gets a boost with new emoji for goggles, a labcoat, a test tube, a petri dish, and the DNA double helix.

The new emoji are also available for an ‘adoption’ scheme with options to pay $100 (unlimited adopters), $1,000 (only five per emoji) or $5,000 (only one per emoji) to sponsor a character. The proceeds go towards extending Unicode support for human languages.


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