diff --git a/spacy/tests/tokenizer/test_exceptions.py b/spacy/tests/tokenizer/test_exceptions.py
index 57281b998..132f27433 100644
--- a/spacy/tests/tokenizer/test_exceptions.py
+++ b/spacy/tests/tokenizer/test_exceptions.py
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 # coding: utf-8
 from __future__ import unicode_literals
 
+import sys
 import pytest
 
 
@@ -37,9 +38,10 @@ def test_tokenizer_excludes_false_pos_emoticons(tokenizer, text, length):
     tokens = tokenizer(text)
     assert len(tokens) == length
 
-
 @pytest.mark.parametrize('text,length', [('can you still dunk?🍕🍔😵LOL', 8),
                                          ('i💙you', 3), ('🤘🤘yay!', 4)])
 def test_tokenizer_handles_emoji(tokenizer, text, length):
-    tokens = tokenizer(text)
-    assert len(tokens) == length
+    # These break on narrow unicode builds, e.g. Windows
+    if sys.maxunicode >= 1114111:
+        tokens = tokenizer(text)
+        assert len(tokens) == length