If all the tubes flashed they would all be bad. The light from one filament, running at a significantly higher voltage than it wants, was probably enough to make it look like they were all lighting up. I once wired a transformer wrong and put the full HV winding on a tube (woops) so I've actually seen what it sounds like you experienced.
My experience with tubes is still pretty limited despite having built several projects using many different kinds but in all that time I've never had a tube misbehave like you described. I suppose that it's possible, but if these are new, barely used tubes it seems somewhat unlikely.