ok, i found a note on mysql forums, & with a little adaptation came up with this for a Windows environment:

mysql -u --execute="SELECT concat('DROP TABLE ',table_name,';') INTO OUTFILE 'c:/drop.sql' FROM information_schema.TABLES WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA='mydbname';source c:/drop.sql;" mydbname

This requires read access to information_schema.TABLES -- i don't know if that's typically available (to non-admins) or not! One other thing -- the output file (drop.sql above) can NOT exist -- so you need to delete it each time. (Of course, if the tables are always the same, you can just do "source c:/drop.sql;" each time after the first!)

...and insert "set foreign_key_checks=off;" before the "source" command if you have FK constraints.