This was my first inclination as well, but when you muck with @ISA, it affects all instances, rather than the particular one you're constructing. With perl, at least.

I suppose you could localize @ISA, but I haven't tried that.

Has anyone else? Is it just as much of a bastardization as what I've suggested above?

Matt

Update: this is of interest: Re: Re: Re (tilly) 1: Strict, strings and subroutines
(thanks to Revelation for the node reference)