No there isn't something like this in the released version, and mainly for the fact that performing operations on sprites like that kinda disguises how much it really costs - i.e. changing color on one will trigger a mesh rebuild, which is fine in itself, but similarly changing to a sprite in another collection will increase draw calls and require mesh splitting, etc.
I've never really thought of a way of making this foolproof, without shooting myself in the foot with support requests asking why something "so simple" slows their game down so much.
Having said that though, in 2D Toolkit 2, you will be able to add a lot more things into a static sprite batcher (text, sliced sprites, etc), and bones to move objects is in the pipeline. Also I do have a sample that takes a bunch of sprites and makes a skinned mesh out of them which you can have if you want, though you can't animate color on them.