Today a new shipment of Beco Butterfly 2 carriers arrived at PAXbaby/Sprout Soup HQ in Columbus, Ohio. This shipment includes the last of the Avery Beco Butterfly, which is being retired (Goodbye old friend!) and the two brand-new, designed by Beco screenprints, Paige and Zoye.
As we looked over our order, we noticed a few design differences in these new carriers. Always on the cutting edge, we are here to share these updates with you!
If you are a Beco aficionado, as the Beco Mamas are, you will know that small design changes from batch to batch are pretty common with Beco Baby Carriers. The design details talked about in this post apply to carriers manufactured in November and December of 2009, which is the newest batch of Butterfly 2 carriers currently available. You can tell when your Beco Butterfly was manufactured by checking the bottom of the box. There are a series of numbers printed on the bottom of every Beco box, 1-12 for the months, and newer boxes include 2009 and 2010 (older boxes only had 2009). The month and year your Beco was manufactured will be marked on these numbers.
The first thing we noticed when looking over the brand new Zoye is the Beco label has been moved. Original Beco Butterfly carriers had the label sewn to the fashion fabric, top and center on the panel. Later the label was changed to a tag that was tacked in to the top right of the carrier, under the snaps for the Beco hood. Well we’ve come full-circle and the tags are once again sewn into the fashion fabric, top and center on the panel beneath the snaps for the hood. All of the labels in the shipment we received have the label sewn on this way, so we assume that is would be true for all Beco Butterfly carriers manufactured in November or December of 2009.
The moving of the label is a pretty obvious design change. Something that will help to identify the age of your Beco carrier.
A less noticeable change on these new Butterfly 2’s is the waist belt. The original Butterfly carriers, up until this point, have had waist belt webbing that attached to the structured base on the center of a half-circle curve. See our Scooter Beco demo (the orange straps) in the pictures below. These new Beco Butterfly carriers have an asymmetrical shape to the waistband edges. They have a sort of inverted curve that ends in a smaller, padded part where the webbing is then attached. It seems like a smoother transition from the original Butterfly carriers.
It also fits nicely over hips and bottom. I have heard some complaints from moms who don’t like how the padded waist fits when they are wearing their little one in a front carry because of the way the padding will rub on their derriere, this new design seems like it would fix that issue.
Are you a Beco-wearing mama who would like to send us your thoughts on the new waist belt design vs the old? Please contact us, we’d love to have you as a guest blogger or just be able to share your comments with our readers. Enjoy your Beco and make sure to check in with myBecoBaby for all the latest Beco news!
As a vendor, and a very special person, hahaa, I tried on a prototype of the new carrier from Beco last September at the ABC Kids Show. I have been waiting patiently, OK, not so patiently, for more information! We now know that it will be called Gemini and is due to be released this spring! 
Although the Gemini can be used with young babies, I comfortably wore my then-10 month old on my front and back in this prototype Gemini! In the tradition of the Beco 4th Generation, the shoulder straps could be unbuckled under the arms and re-fastened as crossed straps across your back. The headrest can be folded down, and the edges of the body of the carrier can be folded inwards and fastened, making the body narrower and more comfortable for smaller babies. (All of these details were true for the version of the Gemini I tried in September 2009. We will, of course, give you the full scoop on the Gemini as soon as more information is released!) 
