Toy emoji: which ones exist and when they arrived
For most of emoji history there was hardly a toy on the keyboard beyond Balloon, Japanese Dolls, Game Die and Video Game from the original 2010 set. Teddy Bear only arrived in 2018 (Emoji 11.0), together with Puzzle Piece, Brick, Abacus, Flying Disc, Skateboard and the two dinosaurs that live in every toy box. 2019 (Emoji 12.0) added Yo-Yo and Kite; 2020 (Emoji 13.0) brought Nesting Dolls, Boomerang, Magic Wand, Piñata and Roller Skate; 2021 (Emoji 14.0) finished the set with Playground Slide, Bubbles and Mirror Ball.
There is still no generic doll, no toy car, no building-block set and no rubber duck of its own. People fill the gaps with the nearest picture: Automobile or Racing Car for a toy car, Locomotive for a toy train, Rocket for the one on the bedroom shelf, Brick for blocks, Duck for the bath duck, Robot for an action figure and or for a doll. That is why this collection reaches beyond the Games row of the keyboard: the toy shelf of emoji is really spread across Activities, Objects, Travel and Animals.
Toy emoji meanings: teddy bear, yo-yo, nesting dolls and boomerang
Teddy Bear is the softest emoji there is. It means comfort, cuddles and childhood: "miss you ", a bedtime text, a get-well message, a pet name for a partner ("my teddy bear"). In captions it marks the cute, soft aesthetic along with and ; in a baby announcement or a Mother's Day post it stands for the child. It carries no hidden meaning, which is part of why it is used so freely.
Yo-Yo is the up-and-down emoji: moods, prices, weight (yo-yo dieting), a relationship that keeps coming back. Boomerang says "it will come back to you": karma, a comeback, be right back, or the looping Instagram Boomerang clip. Nesting Dolls, the matryoshka people search for as "Russian doll emoji", stand for layers, hidden depths, things inside things and family resemblance; the Unicode name is Nesting Dolls. Piñata is a party, above all a Mexican or children's birthday. Puzzle Piece is the missing piece or a perfect fit, and also the autism-awareness symbol, a use many autistic people reject in favour of the infinity sign. Japanese Dolls are the emperor and empress hina dolls set out for Hinamatsuri, Girls' Day, on 3 March.
Water Pistol is the one toy with a past. Its Unicode name is still PISTOL and every platform drew a revolver until Apple redrew it as a green squirt gun in 2016; by 2018 Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook had followed, so today it reads as a toy, a water fight or a playful "I'll get you". Older devices may still show a real gun, so check before you use it anywhere it could be misread.
Toy emoji combos: toy box, bedtime and Toy Story
A toy combo works when it tells a tiny scene. is the toy box; a gift-shop haul or a holiday wish list; bedtime; bath time; a day at the playground; a rainy afternoon indoors. Shops and sellers put or in front of a listing or a bio to say "toys" the way says fashion. Keep a combo to three or four characters; longer strings stop reading as a scene and start reading as a sticker sheet.
"Toy Story emoji combo" is one of the most typed toy searches, and the cast maps neatly: Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Rex, Hamm, Slinky Dog, Mr Potato Head, Bo Peep, or for the little green aliens, for Lotso. is the four-character version, the movie-night invite. For a Jessie combo use with a red ribbon .
Game and dice symbols: emoji and plain text
Game Die is the emoji, but Unicode has also had the six text die faces since version 3.2 in 2002, eight years before the first emoji. They are ordinary characters, so they work in usernames, forum signatures and anywhere colour emoji do not: "rolled " or " snake eyes". Chess Pawn is the same kind of pair: the text pawn dates from Unicode 1.1 in 1993 and got its emoji form in 2018. The whole chess set, every playing card, mahjong and dominoes live in Card, Chess & Dice Symbols.
Video Game (a controller), Joystick (an arcade stick) and Alien Monster (a pixel invader in the style of Space Invaders, 1978) cover electronic play from retro to current. Bullseye, Pool 8 Ball (also read as the Magic 8 Ball fortune toy) and Bowling round out the games people play rather than watch. The balls are here because a ball is the oldest toy there is; for them as sports, see Sports Emoji.
How to find and type toy emoji
On iPhone and Android, open the emoji keyboard and search by the toy's own name: "teddy", "yo-yo", "kite", "dice", "puzzle", "doll" (which finds and ). Searching "toy" alone is hit and miss, so name the thing. On Windows press the Windows key . (period); on a Mac, Control Command Space. On Slack, Discord and GitHub type :teddy_bear:, :yo_yo:, :kite:, :nesting_dolls:, :boomerang: or :game_die:.
The newest toys need a reasonably current system: show as empty boxes on phones that stopped updating before 2021, and on those that stopped before 2022. If the reader might be on an old device, from the 2010 and 2018 sets are the safe picks.
Symbols
54Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Toy box classics
Soft toys, dolls, figures and the toys for building, solving and drawing.
Outdoor play
Things you throw, fly, pop and squirt, and the playground itself.
Games
The dice emoji with its six plain-text faces, board and aiming games, and video games.
Balls
The oldest toy, in every size: kick, bounce, throw, bat and roll.
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyToy Emoji combos
15Worth knowing
- The teddy bear is named after US president Theodore Roosevelt, who refused to shoot a tied-up bear on a Mississippi hunt in November 1902. A Washington Post cartoon by Clifford Berryman spread the story, Brooklyn shopkeeper Morris Michtom sold a stuffed "Teddy's bear", and in Germany the Steiff company made its first jointed bear the same winter. The emoji followed 116 years later, in 2018.
- The first matryoshka set was made in the 1890s at a workshop near Moscow, turned by Vasily Zvyozdochkin and painted by Sergey Malyutin, and won a bronze medal at the 1900 Paris World's Fair. joined Unicode in 2020 under the name Nesting Dolls.
- The six text dice have been in Unicode since 2002 (version 3.2), eight years before the Game Die emoji of 2010.
- began as a realistic revolver. Apple turned it into a green water pistol in 2016 and within two years every major platform had done the same, while Unicode kept the character name PISTOL. It is the clearest case of an emoji's meaning being changed by its drawings rather than by the standard.
- The modern yo-yo craze started with Pedro Flores, a Filipino immigrant who opened a yo-yo factory in Santa Barbara, California, in 1928; the word itself comes from the Philippines. The emoji arrived in 2019.
Questions people ask
8How do I copy and paste toy emoji?
Tap any toy above to copy it, then paste it into a message, caption or bio. They are standard Unicode emoji, so they work on iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac and the web; only the newest ones ( ) need a device updated since about 2021.
What does the teddy bear emoji mean?
means comfort, cuddles and childhood. People send it to say "miss you", to wish someone goodnight, as a pet name for a partner, in get-well messages and in soft, cute captions with . It has no hidden or rude meaning.
What does the yoyo emoji mean?
Yo-Yo literally shows the toy; figuratively it means something that goes up and down or back and forth: moods, prices, weight (yo-yo dieting) or an on-again, off-again relationship. It was added in 2019 (Emoji 12.0).
Is there a Russian doll emoji?
Yes: Nesting Dolls, added in 2020 (Emoji 13.0). It shows a matryoshka set, and most keyboards find it when you search "doll", "matryoshka" or "nesting". There is no separate Barbie-style doll emoji; and Japanese Dolls are the only dolls.
Is there a toy car emoji?
Not a dedicated one. Use Automobile or Racing Car for a toy car, Locomotive for a toy train and Rocket for a toy rocket; for a remote-control car people write .
What does the toy gun emoji mean?
Water Pistol is a toy squirt gun on every major platform since 2016–2018, so it usually means a water fight, a playful threat ("I'll get you") or "bang, you got me". Its Unicode name is still PISTOL and very old devices may draw a real gun.
What are the Toy Story emoji?
The usual combo is Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Rex, Hamm, Slinky Dog, Mr Potato Head, Bo Peep and for the aliens: in short.
What is the toys emoji combo for a kid's birthday?
or for the card; for a toy wish list; for a playground party invite. See Birthday Emoji for the cake and candles.
