Where is the red head emoji?

Apple has released its new batch of emojis for 2018, and people – those on Twitter in particular – have been pretty vocal about it.

Zombies, mermaids, wizards and witches... Apple's iOS 11.1 will feature new and improved emojis to stick in your texts. But these new additions don't come without a little of controversy.

Take the newly added vampire emoji. Whether you like your fanged creatures sparkly or plain, tradition requires that the blood suckers are usually depicted with grey skin and impressive white fangs.

But for some reason, Apple decided that their little Draculas would come in not one, not two, but 5 different shades, including 4 of grey - cue book/movie references here.

And more than one Twitter user pointed out that this was a bit of an overkill.

British Grime MC JME tweeted a screenshot from the new emoji board, writing: "I understand Apple's on this equality flex, but I'm sure the vampires won't complain with just one shade of grey."

The Unicode consortium (the organisation behind international software standards) introduced different shades of skin colour on top of the standard yellow emojis that have been making the rounds for years. The diverse emojis made their debut in early 2015.

Unfortunately for them, the attention to detail regarding the vampire emoji - a mythical creature - didn't sit well with some, and mainly highlighted the real travesty of that emoji update: where are the redhead emojis people have been yearning for?

In January 2017, it was announced that Silicon Valley would introduce the long-awaited emojis. This was the result of years of complaints on social media by ginger users.

A Scottish petition submitted by one GingerParrot gathered 21,800 signatures and was delivered to Apple and Unicode.

It seems that campaigners efforts have paid off.

The Unicode Technical Committee approved a first draft for redhead and curly hair emojis last week during a meeting with Apple. These new addition would most likely be rolled out for most phones in the second half of 2018.

"Don't worry redheads: your feedback has been heard!" said Jeremy Burge, the Editor in Chief of Emojipedia, who attended the meeting.