Skip to main content

Taco Bell has 600 hilarious GIFs and images for you to express your taco love

taco bell created 600 gifs and images to celebrate arrival of emoji
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Attention taco lovers: Taco Bell has created the taco emoji engine, a Twitter-based instant-response feature that churns out 600 photos and animated GIFs, all to celebrate the arrival of the new taco emoji. Tweet @TacoBell with the taco emoji and another emoji, and an amusing mashup image of the two is tweeted back at you.

For example, tweeting a taco and a sunglass-wearing smiley face will yield a taco wearing sunglasses.

We tweeted emojis of taco and sushi, and we received a photo of a hard-shell taco nigiri (which looks pretty good, to be honest). Here’s what happens when you ponder about tacos:

Recommended Videos

The new emoji is thanks in part to a Change.org petition Taco Bell set up in November 2014, calling for a taco icon. The petition received 33,000 signatures, and the Unicode Consortium unveiled a taco emoji in June 2015 (although that’s based on most requested icons from users). With the arrival of iOS 9.1, the taco emoji was added to the native keyboard.

Offline, Taco Bell is handing out four limited-edition Doritos Locos Taco (DLT) holsters at its stores, each highlighting the new emoji. The holsters are aimed at Instagram-loving, Taco Bell-eating millennials and teens who might share on the photo social network.

doritos locos taco holster
Image used with permission by copyright holder

“They’re all meant to be fun, almost collectible pieces. I think they’re going to be highly Instagrammable,” Marisa Thalberg, Taco Bell’s chief brand engagement officer, told Adweek.

The fast-food restaurant worked with creative agency Deutsch L.A. on the new social media campaign, which will tied to the company’s revamped website (with clever URL, ta.co). As a brand and foodstuff that resonate with young people, it would sense for Taco Bell to leverage social media to its advantage. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a Crunchwrap Supreme to sink our teeth into.

Les Shu
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I am formerly a senior editor at Digital Trends. I bring with me more than a decade of tech and lifestyle journalism…
I paid Meta to ‘verify’ me — here’s what actually happened
An Instagram profile on an iPhone.

In the fall of 2023 I decided to do a little experiment in the height of the “blue check” hysteria. Twitter had shifted from verifying accounts based (more or less) on merit or importance and instead would let users pay for a blue checkmark. That obviously went (and still goes) badly. Meanwhile, Meta opened its own verification service earlier in the year, called Meta Verified.

Mostly aimed at “creators,” Meta Verified costs $15 a month and helps you “establish your account authenticity and help[s] your community know it’s the real us with a verified badge." It also gives you “proactive account protection” to help fight impersonation by (in part) requiring you to use two-factor authentication. You’ll also get direct account support “from a real person,” and exclusive features like stickers and stars.

Read more
Here’s how to delete your YouTube account on any device
How to delete your YouTube account

Wanting to get out of the YouTube business? If you want to delete your YouTube account, all you need to do is go to your YouTube Studio page, go to the Advanced Settings, and follow the section that will guide you to permanently delete your account. If you need help with these steps, or want to do so on a platform that isn't your computer, you can follow the steps below.

Note that the following steps will delete your YouTube channel, not your associated Google account.

Read more
How to download Instagram photos for free
Instagram app running on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5.

Instagram is amazing, and many of us use it as a record of our lives — uploading the best bits of our trips, adventures, and notable moments. But sometimes you can lose the original files of those moments, leaving the Instagram copy as the only available one . While you may be happy to leave it up there, it's a lot more convenient to have another version of it downloaded onto your phone or computer. While downloading directly from Instagram can be tricky, there are ways around it. Here are a few easy ways to download Instagram photos.

Read more