Before I loose any more reputation (whatever that is) here is my solution I worked out all by myself - talk about stupid - what a muppet! ;-)

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use XML::Simple;

my $xml = XMLin($xmlsource);
my @items = @{$xml->{Item}};

foreach my $item (@items) {
     print "$item->{ProductType}<br/>";
}

# prints out all the item names
[download]

Thanks, Tom