As an afterthought, the Tk::Progressbar is not a very solid widget. It is prone to memory leaks, and setting options can be tricky, as you have found out. If you need to manipulate the progressbars, you might want to build your own on a Tk::Canvas.

A crude example:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Tk;

my $w=20;
my $x=0;
my $y=0;

my %colors = (
   0 => ['black','yellow'], 
   1 => ['yellow','black'], 
   2 => ['white','green'],    
   3 => ['green','white'], 
   4 => ['grey','red'], 
   5 => ['red','grey'], 
   6 => ['blue','white'], 
   7 => ['white','blue'], 
   8 => ['orange','grey45'], 
   9 => ['grey45','orange'], 
);

my %bardata = (
   0 => rand 200,
   1 => rand 200,
   2 => rand 200,
   3 => rand 200,
   4 => rand 200,
   5 => rand 200,
   6 => rand 200,
   7 => rand 200,
   8 => rand 200,
   9 => rand 200,
);

my %bars;

my $mw=tkinit;
my $c = $mw->Canvas->pack;

for (0..9) {
  $bars{$_} = $c->createRectangle($x,$y,$x+20,$bardata{$_},
             -fill=> ${$colors{$_}}[0],
          );

my $text = $c->createText($x+10,$y+10,
           -anchor=>'center',
       -fill => ${$colors{$_}}[1],
       -text => $_
          );
      
      $x+=20;
}

$mw->repeat(200, sub{ &update });
 
MainLoop;
##########################################################
sub update{

$x=0;
$y=0;

 %bardata = (
   0 => rand 200,
   1 => rand 200,
   2 => rand 200,
   3 => rand 200,
   4 => rand 200,
   5 => rand 200,
   6 => rand 200,
   7 => rand 200,
   8 => rand 200,
   9 => rand 200,
);


  for (0..9) {

  $c->delete( $bars{$_}  );

  $bars{$_} = $c->createRectangle($x,$y,$x+20,$bardata{$_},
             -fill=> ${$colors{$_}}[0],
          );

  my $text = $c->createText($x+10,$y+10,
           -anchor=>'center',
       -fill => ${$colors{$_}}[1],
       -text => $_
          );
      
      $x+=20;
  }
}
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