DimitriAus

This lightweight plugin removes WordPress emoji functionality to reduce HTTP requests and improve page load times.
What it removes:
<ul>
<li>Emoji detection script from page head</li>
<li>Emoji styles from frontend and admin</li>
<li>TinyMCE wpemoji plugin</li>
<li>Emoji conversion in RSS feeds</li>
<li>Emoji handling in emails</li>
<li>DNS prefetch for emoji CDN</li>
</ul>

Manly No Emojis

Disables the emoji functionality in WordPress to improve performance.

Cople

TinyMCE Smiley Button

A nice to have would be to turn the text in the wysiwyg to a smiley. EG. :) <- Would turn into the smiley image after a space is added. A client of ours wants this functionality so i shall send relevant code to do so once i've figured it out. :)

Manly No Emojis vs TinyMCE Smiley Button