Might be something wrong with the animation...i also know (from logs of msn beta chat yesterday) that they are working on some bugs concerning animation.
Roger (Expert)
Q: Will ALL animated emoticons work in final version? in beta, more than half of animated gifs doesn't work as expected!
A: We plan to have this fixed in Final
Taken from: Reminder: MSN Beta - Official MSN Messenger chat (January 20, 2005)
Try the one i attached.