getting serialized variable names & values

I'm serializing an array and inserting it into a mysql db however I'm running into trouble when I'd like to retrieve variable names and values from a different page. (after unserializing) I can get the names & values using "while(list($key,$val)=each($storevars))" however I cannot manipulate the variable name/value using that method. So basically all I'm after is a way to retrieve the variable names and assign the corresponding values to them according to how they were when I first serialized them. How would I go about doing such a thing? Jason