Mystery...

... solved! A few posts ago, I asked if anyone knew more about four interesting, if a little stylised, Great War French that I had turned up here at Hobbit Towers. All I could remember was that I had bought them in late 1984 or early 1985, and that I have, somewhere, a few similar steel helmeted Germans. And, of course, someone did know. Mark identifies them as 20mm Akheton figures sold by the Harrow Model Shop (I must have bought them mail order) in the early 1980s. Cheers, Mark! The little fellows themselves now look like this:

They are certainly a very chunky '20mm', and, in fact, measure 25mm. I am still in two minds about them, although I do like the running and crouching chap on the left here, and it is interesting to see that Captain Haddock appears to have served on land and with the French, not the Belgian army in the Great War. The tank in the background is a very fine resin 1/76 Schneider, and the reason that it is a head on view is that I've painted it thus:

One of a handful of the lumbering beasts that were knocking about at the start of the Spanish Civil War. There is a well-known photo of the tail end of one, with the fancy Red Flag and 'JSU', during the siege of the Alcazar, so here it is with some 20mm (real 20mm by Irregular) militia. 

Still on the Iberian Peninsular, here are my stove pipes finished as per the botched new painting approach:

They're OK, but I think I'll go back to my old ways for the next company of these fine fellows.