Sweden's IKEA, the world's largest furniture retailer, has released a keyboard app loaded with emoticons it claims will "take the misunderstanding out of communications".

IKEA calls its happy collection of emoticons and stuff you can buy at IKEA, "IKEA Emoticons" (What else?). It's available for the iOS and Android and is on App Store and. Google Play. There's even an entertaining video featuring a Swedish guy nerd explaining the emoticons in English with a heavy Swedish accent.

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The emoticons, however, are mostly emoji, the Japanese ideograms or smileys common in Japanese smartphone messages and webpages. Think "kawaii" (Japanese for cute) and you'll realize the difference between an emoji and an emoticon.

In this context, IKEA Emoticons are almost all emoji. And there are a lot of them. But as you browse this enormous collection of emojis, you can't help but feel they're also there to help sell IKEA's massive line of furniture and brands like Lack and Klippan.

The promotional video says the emojis are there to "take the misunderstanding out of communications". They use a quarreling couple to illustrate the point.

Without the IKEA Emoticons, the couple don't talk and look like they want to strangle each other. Using the emoticons, however, makes them lovey-dovey as they spew out nonsense like "I love you".

The video seems to suggest that instead of working hard at verbally communicating your emotions to a loved one despite the pain, one just has to send the other person a cute IKEA emoticon and everything will be fine. Just like magic.

That's not how it works in real life. And we know it. But IKEA can't be faulted for trying to install some cuteness in the process.