As “bobaddicts” all over Asia and the U.S. have gone to incorporate bubble tea in just about everything, the Unicode Consortium announced the inclusion of the popular drink in the latest set of 117 new emoji.
The bubble tea emoji, part of Emoji 13.0, features a transparent cup, a large straw, some ice, milk tea, and of course, plenty of tapioca balls.
The Unicode Consortium, based in Mountain View, California is a nonprofit organization that develops, maintains and promotes the Unicode Standard, which provides the basis for processing, storage and interchange of text data “in any language in all modern software and information technology protocols.”
Simply put, Unicode aims to support the texting needs of users from all backgrounds, whether mainstream or minority scripts.
Aside from bubble tea, Emoji 13.0 includes a smiling face with a tear, a polar bear and a piñata, to name a few.
The set of new emoji also includes 55 gender and skin-tone variants, including gender-inclusive emoji.
Over the last few years, the Unicode Consortium has faced criticism for taking too long to address its lack of diversity.
As bubble milk tea became a global phenomenon, many Asians, Asian Americans and other boba lovers have wished for it to become an emoji.
With their wish being granted, “bobaddicts” unsurprisingly took to Twitter to rejoice:
The new emoji are expected to arrive on mobile phones in September or October, though some platforms may release them earlier, according to Unicode.
