Ahh, I suppose it had to do with the way I stored all my tiles. One big ton, turned over for playing purposes.
Back then, I actually had a big drawstring bag (that my mum made) which all the 'classic' lego went into, but when undrawn and laid out into a big sheet was (relatively) easy to sift through for anything but the rarest pieces. Space Lego (I go back to when there were just red and white astronauts, not quite far enough back for just the one colour) and Space-sets compatible town-set bricks did eventually get stored more orderly, and Technic lego (starting from the blue helicopter, with gyrocopter alt) was immediately sorted into some stackable plastic boxes (all axles in one, all "little grey things" in another, all pin-type grey-things in another) or otherwise stored together (all yellow beams bunched together with yellow plates, all blue beams bunched together with blue plates). When the first pneumatic sets came out, I went for "all pneumatic components stuff in one box", IIRC, all the way from the little T-pieces to the sprung pumping piston, including both black and grey air-tubes.
When I revived my collecting with the very first Star Wars-themed sets (some time after all but the most occasional purchase of Technic, IIRC) I did try and keep each set within each box, barring the occasional bit of temporary cross-pollination of parts. If not fully constructed (hard to do with some of the larger models), then carefully disassembled into sections that would either slide into the boxes (smaller models) or lay in the large-side opening boxes without too much inhibition of the closing process. The original Collector's Set Blockade Runner was never disassembled, and is currently gathering dust (and the rubber bands used to keep the truncated cone segments closed, doubtless perished) in the tray of the unclosable box on top of a cupboard. My attitude with the Star Wars stuff is very much an antithesis to my old pleasures, and perhaps affected by the concept of them being potentially collectable. (Which, because by then the concept of Collectible Stuff had already been proven with the original Star Wars merchandise, is probably far from true and a pipe-dream. They are also by no means in prime-condition, and definitely not unopened, packaging. Other than that, I suppose
some of the models in this range that I possess might be worth something equivalent to the inflation-adjusted original purchase price.) It's not even as if I have been able to maintain a completist approach to this series (although I have at least four different versions of the X-Wing (possibly five), and at least a triptych insofar as the Millenium Falcon, not including the currently available versions.
Thinking of it, I really can't remember green brick tiles. Not sure about brown, but I think I was really short on green bricks.
The first 'more standard', and not absolutely 'biological' green bricks I remember (excepting green-transluscent ones, from the Space series, used as either navigation lights on the various space-planes/vehicles or (interestingly, given the original no-war mandate) the "glowy end" of the lasergun-like/possible-scanner-like pieces) were perhaps from the very early 90s or probably late 80s. I have in mind some Technic set that included one or two 2x1 standard-height normal blocks in a non-beam situ as decoration. But this is a very vague recollection. I think green bricks got particularly prevalent in the Star Wars series (Slave I and/or II, there having been several versions of this, and even discounting pure "vegetation" pieces, like the "swamp stuff to hang off of the X-Wing" pieces, decoration around Yoda's house I think there are other green blocks in there... plus green lightsaber 'beams', in their transluscent green stuff) but I had spent some time only casually observing the changing world of Lego. Some of the other themed stuff (Indiana Jones, that generic adventure series, maybe Harry Potter) or indeed green-liveried train-sets might also be using them, but they never interested me enough to purchase them. And I'm pretty sure that with their brick-ordering service (which I last used in the early 80s to gather together 1000 or so caterpillar-track links for a project at that time which merely caused me to burn out the two Technic motors that I had accumulated at that time) has been able to service green-brick needs for anyone that wants them for at least two decades.
Indeed, they've very much strayed away from the "no weapons" ideology. And given that the late 70s space series men had those gun-like pieces (and in the early 80s this became more obvious with the black "bazooka with sighting ring"-type item, or whenever that eight-wheeled multi-suspensioned rocket carrier/launcher first came about... I know I got it for a birthday, but not which one) it has long been the case.
But I fear I digress from the subject at hand.