Popular foods are on the list, with an avocado (left), rashers of bacon (middle) and the much-anticipated taco (right). The method of adding new emoji isn’t entirely simple. They must first be approved by an organisation called the Unicode Consortium in California responsible for developing Unicode

There's even going to be a black heart to send if you are feeling a bit alternative.

The last update saw faces with a greater range of skin tones, extra spots emoji and also the highly anticipated taco.

The method of adding new emoji isn’t entirely simple.

They must first be approved by an organisation called the Unicode Consortium in California responsible for developing Unicode.

The nominations are in for new additions to the emoji alphabet to feature as part of Unicode 9 including a selfie, a dancing man to accompany the dancing woman (pictured)

They select candidates from popular or topical requests. Candidates are also picked if there are existing gaps in current emoji - for example, Unicode 7.0 had a tiger, but not a lion.

It is then up to companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft to integrate the new images into their systems.

In May last year, emoji was named as the world’s fastest growing language.

Popular foods considered missing are also on the list, with an avocado, paella a pickle and a croissant making it to the shortlist. New drinks include a glass of water, champagne and whisky on the rocks

Mrs Clause will accompany the Santa emoji along with a facepalm and a selfie. Google announced this week that more than 200 million people upload images to the Google Photos application each month, and are responsible for an extraordinary 24 billion selfies.