[update:] This was my fault, apparently Object color must be key framed for GLSL instead of material color, this was not clear in the number of tutorials I read/watched on how to animate color. 
[original post:]
This was fun, after countless hours of tinkering with material actions, and doing many searches on it I discovered that my blend file wasn’t working because of bug, not because I’m inept at blender LOL
Oh man, so the problem is that Material actions just don’t work in GLSL, they only work in multitexture shading mode. You can test my blend file here, try to play the materialaction in all three shading modes to see the unique results with each. I submitted a bug report if anyone wants to check it out.
Thanks 
https://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=36668&group_id=9&atid=306
Attachments
BGE Material action not functioning in GLSL shading mode.blend (638 KB)