How to use Illustrator's blend tool to blend colors across existing shapes?

Question

Let's say I have six vector shapes already created, and the one on the far left is red and the one on the far right is blue, and I'd like to use the Blend Tool to create a smooth color between those shapes. How do I do this? If it's possible, it doesn't seem intuitive. Or is there another tool for this?

(NOTE: I don't want to use a gradient fill - each shape is large and needs to be a uniform color)

EDIT: Need to illustrate my problem visually.. so let's say I'm starting out with this:

My goal is to blend from red to green across all those shapes, resulting in this:

Answer 1

After Question edit:

Simply create a couple of "working" shapes and create the blend as described below.

Once you have the blend with colors, choose Object > Blend > Expand. This will provide separate shapes for each iteration of the blend.

You can then create swatches or use teh eye dropper to pull the colors from the various blend iterations and apply those colors to other objects.

Illustrator has no feature for a "color only" blend. Blends account for the entire objects, not merely their color.

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Simply select both objects and choose Object > Blend > Make.

If you then want to adjust the iterations in the blend, choose Object > Blend > Blend Options and set it to Specified Steps and adjust...

If the start and end shapes have solid fills then each iteration will also have a solid fill. No gradients are created.

Answer 2

Make a stepped blend between your terminal shapes. Pick the generated intermediate colors with the color picker to the actual shapes.

Insert more steps in the blend options if you want to have better distance proportionality. The extreme of it is to fill a rectangle with a gradient, rasterize it and pick the colors from there.

If you happen to have 700 shapes to color individually along a blend or a gradient you obviously want some script for the job. Unfortunately I am not a programmer.