Mystery Sydney French Chickens

[bob]

Whilst digging out photos and other materials for my forthcoming contribution on the large collection of coin op machines that was discovered in the '70s I came across these photos of that I had assumed were the remains of some coin op machines. They are photos of metal chickens taken through the shop window of an antique shop that was closed at the time. Unfortunately the reflections in the glass and the lighting conditions make them rather unsatisfactory as photos.
I saw these in an antique shop window on a visit to Sydney in the early '90s. Unfortunately the shop was closed and we were leaving Sydney (800 kilometres from me in Melbourne) before the shop was due to again. I subsequently telephoned the shop owner but could get no information about them whatsoever. I assumed that they were coin op machines as they had coin entries and that they were French as they were made of zinc.

I got in touch with the Jean Claude Baudot the leading French coin op collector, with whom I had become friendly. I sent him copies of these photos and he was very interested indeed, but provided me with no information as to what the machines might have been. Very shortly afterwards the shop closed down completely and I was not ever able to find out what had happened to these items in spite of enquiries with Sydney antique shop owners and collectors on subsequent visits to Sydney.
The chickens seem to be the top part of machines that would have had some sort of vending or music box mechanism in the base. I haven’t come across anything similar anywhere, but perhaps some other readers of this forum can help with some information about them.

[ddstoys]

It's amazing what's out there