Hello Rick ( posting to two forums !) I've got it working ( sort of ! ) with the following attributes added just above the property declaration for MenuItems

[EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Always)]
[Browsable(true)]

you have to close down VS for the changes to take effect though, before I added these attributes the property "MenuItems" was not visible in the prop sheet for the menu, now it is, and has a button (...) which adds the correct ( i.e. mine ) menuitem class BUT ! only for the menu pads, if you click on a pad and obey the "type here" prompt the standard items are still added, I'll keep at it though, my next step is to try your suggestion overriding the CollectionItemType