I don't know for a fact but I'm going to say I doubt it. I got ahold of a bunch of characters and sent them to my BBM friends. Some got them the same way as me...characters. Some got them as black boxes. And some got them as squiggly characters (not cute little pig and horse icons and such).
Those icons will only work in BBM 5.0 only (the new BBM with avatars and barcodes), other then that you'll see black boxes. They will not send to other phones as far as I know. If you want them without the app, find them here or get someone to send them to you on BBM and save the ones you want as autotexts.