I had thought of the same idea but as a posable "octopus" figure. Strips/locks coming off a central T or H shaped meeting and rigged for bend etc. possibly ezpose. You would layer these wigs after posing the locks and spawning as prop with one of the existing "prop from figure" scripts. Then you could "cut" length with the grouping tool.

Back in P4 days I had a set of morphing props spawned off the ball prop that were a hair construction set. Lost it to a big household disaster. It was a great way of making lowish res hair. Was based on a Kozuboru tutorial on trans maps and textures.