I retrieved these four colorful little emoticons-based pin buttons from my brother’s pile of artifacts. I estimate they’re about a decade old. Since those little keyboard expressions are still going strong on screens from the desktop to the pocket, I guess these pins are not necessarily dated.

Except, maybe, for that pink-magenta one on the far left. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what communicative emotion it’s supposed to represent. I may have the orientation wrong, meaning that the “v” and caret should be flipped 180 degrees. If you know what I’m missing, please clue me in. The others, of course — comprising | | — are pretty self-explanatory.

Photo has been Flickrized, of course. Strictly for propagation purposes. Despite my best lighting efforts, my cameraphone just wouldn’t yield a sharper picture. I guess I could have recreated the buttons in full-color digital glory with Illustrator, but that smacks of work.