This is indeed one of those cases where using no strict 'refs' is best. Of course I'm sure you can do this without having to turn off strict refs (check out Strict, strings and subroutines for some insights), this really is a very valid case to turn them off, as this is usually how most symbol table munging is done. Heck, the likes of Exporter.pm don't even use strict at all!
HTH

broquaint