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iCandy Peach Blossom 2012 – Six Month Update Review

We have had the new Peach Blossom (2012 / Pip 2 Convertor) now for six months and we still absolutely love it. The children are now aged 3.1 years old and 16 months old.

In the last six months we have sadly said goodbye to our much loved Baby Jogger City Select because it became too heavy to push. We also have had a new Mountain Buggy Duet, but it also was too heavy to push. But meanwhile the Peach Blossom still remains easy to push one handed. It still manoeuvres easily around shops and obstacles. Recently I experimented and on the flat the Peach Blossom would happily roll along using just my thumb and forefinger even with lots of shopping on board!! It really is good! On more challenging terrain eg gravel or hills, I do now sometimes need two hands to push but I am amazed that I have been able to push one handed for so long.

My eldest requests to go in the lower seat even before I park the car! I think she sees the lower seat as a den or house or something! But sometimes we choose to put the little one underneath, especially if shopping, because then I have more space in the basket without little legs in the way (it is easy to move the fabric footrest out of the way to put shopping under the lower seat), and also the little one can be reclined when he inevitably falls asleep, without compromising our daughter. On outings we tend to put the youngest in the upper seat and our daughter walks when she can, but the lower seat always comes with us, ready for the inevitable tantrum when it’s time to go home, or when she simply gets tired and grumpy, or we end up in a gift shop full of breakables!

The Peach Blossom is holding the weight of the eldest well, and indeed the combined weight of the children very well. There is no sign of the Peach Blossom straining or creaking at all (we do see it with some pushchairs!) However it is easier on my back if I load the lower child in first, and then add the upper seat and child. My daughter can’t hop in and out of the rear seat without help, but that’s a small compromise to make for a double pushchair that is so easy to push with the children in! It may sound an obvious statement that a double pushchair should be able to be pushed with two older children in, but the reality is that it is hard to find a pushchair that does push easily with two children in and which really works well, with some storage space for shopping / changing bag. This is one reason why the new Peach Blossom gets such high praise from us here at Best Buggy.

Our children are still very comfortable in the seat units. At 3.1 years old our daughter has the hood on the highest hood setting, but she has plenty of head room. The removable seat liner is still in place (we could remove it to give her more seat width, depth and height if necessary). We have recently unzipped the rear of the hood to fit Buggysnuggles for winter and it is clear just how the Peach will keep growing with your child as they grow taller, because the hood just keeps sliding up the frame! The Peach seat back is one of the tallest seats we have measured. My daughter finds the footrest fine too, however her huge size 10 feet do slip off and she prefers now to dangle her legs. But that is no problem in either seat: in the front she is a long way off the ground, and in the rear she simply rests her feet in, or on the front of the basket.

We stopped using the Maxi-cosi Cabriofix a couple of months ago. Our baby was well over a year old and although he was heavy by that point to put onto the lower car seat adaptors, and it was a little tricky to fit with being so low down, we still managed it fine. I did love the fact that the car seat parent faced. It was one of my favourite ways to use the Peach Blossom, and I really wish now that we had kept our first Peach Blossom and used it through the newborn baby stage. We honestly thought the Baby Jogger City Select would last us longer than the current 2009 Peach Blossom, and there was no one more shocked than us when our much loved and used City Select simply became unusable by the time the baby was approx 10 months old.

If you are reading this without knowing our background, we used to have a Peach and it was my favourite single pushchair (and still is even after trying many more singles since). So it is lovely to be entering a period now where our eldest can walk at times eg into the leisure centre for her swimming lesson, and that is giving me opportunity to use the Peach parent facing for the youngest. I am loving the interaction that gives me. It amazes me that iCandy have designed a pushchair that really functions so brilliantly either as a single or a double, but also looks so beautiful as well. It is so easy just to have that elusive pushchair that takes up a small amount of space in the car (the seats stack), but yet can be a (parent or outward facing) single or a double. I have just one pushchair and the luxury of choice depending on where we go. As a single, the Peach is neat and small. I even managed to fit it through a narrow changing cubicle door last week, which is something you can’t do with many singles!

Yes, there are some negatives to the Peach Blossom but as with all tandems it depends how important they are to you, and whether the benefits are worth it! I have heard people say that it is hard to reach the lower child, but I have had back problems and I can get both my children in and out of the lower seat even with the upper seat in place. I think the wider spacing between the seats with the new Pip2 convertor may help this. The pip convertors are a tad fiddly to put on and off – I always get them the wrong way round! – but you get quicker at them and it only takes a matter of seconds. I do find the lower seat recline button hard to use. My arms simply don’t reach around the lower seat. I discovered recently (until then I thought it was accidental!) that you should be able to hold one button in on one side and then press the other to then reckon, but you often find the first side pops out prematurely. I also never know which is the recline button – inner or outer ring – and which is to remove the seats. I am constantly popping the seat off when I need to recline!! But you realise instantly what you have done and can click the seat back down easily.

What else can I say? The wheels are great – although the Peach Blossom doesn’t like being driven head first off a step (but that’s not really an issue!). It is lovely to never have to worry about punctures and yet have a pushchair than can handle grass, gravel, cobbles etc. The handlebar foam amazingly is still in tact with no rips, tears or dints (and believe me the Peach Blossom has been put up and down everywhere!). The seats still look like new (but my children don’t eat in pushchairs unless it’s an emergency). The basket is still solid.

I wish there had been a large Peach cosy toes for my eldest but the retailers thought she wouldn’t fit. Buggysnuggles really dont work because there is nowhere to tie the Buggysnuggle on and the envelope top is a bit square.  I dont like having the hoods unzipped because I am constantly tugging them back down, and our eldest is constantly wanting her hood up and she pulls it off the back each time.

I would still love a tandem raincover. We dont have a Peach Blossom lower raincover and so have been using a B-Dual raincover which fits pretty well and is easy simply to fling over and velcro up.

I think one suggestion I would like to make to iCandy is that an easy harness height adjustor would be really useful. One of the major benefits to our use of the new Peach Blossom is the ability to be able to choose which seat each child sits in on any given outing depending on whether the baby needs a nap, or we are shopping, or the toddler is walking and the baby wants to see out. Due to the seat sizes being almost the same, this is a HUGE benefit. But it only works for us because our children are a similar size (children after a certain age tend to get longer legs rather than a longer back), and thankfully our two children use the same harness setting. With siblings of different sizes it wouldn’t be possible to have this benefit because the harnesses would take too much altering.

BUT – PLEASE dont read the negative points above and see them as major issues – because in the big scheme of things the new 2012 Peach Blossom just encapsulates everything you require from a pushchair in every day, practical, real life without any major niggles. You can simply just get on and use it, however you want to use it. Best of all, it will carry your two older children easily, and does not feel like you are pushing a tank!

The new Peach Blossom truly is a pushchair that will take you from single to double and back to single again without needing another pushchair. It gets 5 gold stars from us here at Best Buggy!!

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