The spurious characters sounds like they are connecting at a mismatched speed. You need to sort that our before this menu will work.
you might want to use DNS instead of this below:
menu menuname text 1 Host 1
menu menuname command 1 telnet x.y.z.a
menu menuname text 2 Host 2
menu menuname command 2 telnet x.y.z.b
menu menuname text 3 Host 3
menu menuname command 3 telnet x.y.z.c
line tty 1 8
autocommand menu menuname