. . . real-world minis a while back? Well, I've spent the afternoon on the Wayback Machine, and it turns out the ancient oldbies beat us to it by nearly a decade! PPC author Elvealauregaladriel Aure made a list:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040816120729/http://elvea-aure.0catch.com/ppc/minithespians.htm

At least, with regard to real world actors. Mini-Thespian, anyone? Although it sounds like Elvea Aure found these minis from a random internet trawl, so they probably don't "count" by today's standards anyway.