Smoothing between spheres

So for my game I am instantiating spheres for building a spine. How would I generate a form of skin around them, so they look like 1 solid mesh? The first thing I thought of was to do with the cloth physics, but I realized the complications that come with it.

 

Maybe something like this,
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/MetaBalls

 

Yep

If it was me id just instantiate whole spheres at the joints, then create smooth struts between them, scaled to fit the gap

2 pink spheres, one green strut between:

 

@hpjohn

Great solution, I'll use it. A million spheres in a single scene won't screw this up, right?

@mgear

I've been avoiding Metaballs because they generally tend to take up tons of memory, and on low-quality systems (Unlike mine, but I need this to run on my friens computer). Also, with millions of them/scene for all the creatures I may as well crash every low-end system with a virus (works as well as the game)