I did a search and found that for the past 7 years or so, customers have been asking for smilies to be available from the quick reply box. VB staff has pointed folks to vb.org for the hack.
My question: why not just make it part of the default build? Silly as it may sound, smilies on my site (many are custom) are one of the things that sets my forum apart from things like facebook and other sites. They should not be hard to get to. Why not do this? Image here from a post from the past: