I mean to be fair, usually these were tucked away in the back of a heavy, wooden TV cabinet where it was dark and difficult to reach into to match the colours, even with a torch; and you couldn’t just feel your way around the back to plugging them in because they all felt the same.
You gotta remember that in the Old World, 100 years is not a long time. It's only like 30 years. So in the 90s, they were 100 years ago and hadn't invented flashlights yet so they used torches instead.