That works for normal perl, but not for templates in Template Toolkit (TT2), which is what the attempted unblessed object is for use with. TT2 uses a "dot" (.) notation rather than normal perl syntax, then tries to figure out what to do based on the type (I think it just looks at ref($whatever), but I am not very familiar its inner workings) when it compiles the template.

When you say something like [% d.e.f %], TT2 will actually use $d->e->f or $d->e->{f} or $d->{e}->{f}, etc., depending on what $d and $d->e (or $d->{e}, etc.) really is. This is the DWIM behavior that Randall referred to above.