tinyE: ...
I hate you s23021536! :P An hour from now I'm going to be sitting in my room with spread sheets and crap laying out all over the floor ready to write a thesis on this.
XD i'm sorry...
I'm off to bed though so I'll just say "Good luck with that!"
If I may share a thought : perhaps a good place to start would be to look for games that indicated a player's health with little hearts, for which red would be a natural colour. Its only natural then for health power ups to also be red and perhaps they came in potion form. But the blue mana potions is a tough one :P
If my theory pans out you can include me in the acknowledgements of your thesis :D