Product page dropdown box for variant SKU's

Posted elsewhere but with no response so will try here.

Instead of having a product page listing every sku is there a way to change it to a drop down box?

1 product dropbox then there might be the 5 or so different variant SKU's in there to select from.

Its a pain have a page with lots of the same but very small changes size color etc.

I can do it with attributes instead but then stock quantities would not work correctly.


Found a sample here of what I want to achieve

http://www.locksgalore.com.au/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=1&category=locks_deadlocks_deadlatches_deadlocks

That's a goal for me as well down the road.  Right now what I've done is to modify a product template (Variants in Grid - Filtered) which looks like the following page:

http://www.siegyssoccer.com/beta/products/5114-adidas-predator-absolion-x-fg-black.aspx

There's only two variants on that page since a lot of them are out of stock (not shown) but it gets the point across.