Hmm, I've now set it up a little differently and am using:

LoadMe::init(); to create the objects and it seems to work well apart from one module that still keeps dying with "$foo and $bar require explicit package names" even though I have:

use Module qw/$foo $bar/; at the top.

Once I add:

use vars qw/$foo $bar/;

...it works but $foo and $bar are undefined :(