I'm thinking about customizing my Windows 7's application icons, so that they all follow a specific theme (Token-like icons).

This would involve using Resource Hacker (or similar) to patch each .exe. Not only this would be tiresome, but also it would require doing it again at each update of each application (nevermind that some could break just because it was tampered with).

Instead, is there any way to launch an application with a specific icon?

Ideally it would be something from the command-line (so I can make a shortcut), like this:

launchwithicon.exe --app C:\myapp.exe --icon C:\myicon.ico

Note that while it is possible to do something similar by setting the taskbar to "always combine, hide labels", I do not like this approach and instead am looking for something that works without combining the taskbar icons.