L'Eclair & Electric Defence Gun

[coppinpr]

I was wondering who made this rather nice well made shooter. The high end auction house that sold it said it was French and made by Le Garenne, but reading the label on the machine that is far from clear.

They also sold this very unusual "shocker". It seems you had to try and aim and fire the gun using the knobs while it gave you the shock (??). Made in 1941 by Automatic Games.

[treefrog]

It is in Arcadia book, but also we had one sell in the Canterbury sale you saw in 2018....

Re: Canterbury Auction Galleries auction: 6-7 Feb '18

[coppinpr]

Yes, I'd seen the machine but did not know who made it (in fact looking back at the Canterbury auction I only just noticed it now). The VERY high end auction house that I saw online did indeed get it wrong. My guess, from the label only, as I know nothing of this sort of machine, was the name "Loubet" which I now see is the correct maker's name. It makes more sense than the name they gave, which I think simply means "a good time" or something like it.
Never seen anything like the defence gun shocker though.

[pennymachines]

Morphy Auctions are poor at attributing British and European machines.
La Garenne was part of Louis Loubet's picturesque address at 1, Passage de Brunettes, La Garenne-Colombe in the northwestern suburbs of Paris. Appropriately, it means 'the warren', because French royalty used to hunt there in the 18th century.
L'Eclair is also in Jean Lemaitre's book.