How do I break wood?

I have boxes stacked up against each other. When the player is travelling at a high speed and collides with a box, I want the box to break (the player is a heavy metal ball).

I could do an animation manually (with an image editor and the built in animations tool), but this will look very weird in game. What I mean is, if the impact originates at the left of the box, and the animation is made for that way, it will be fine, but if the player collides at top of box, animation will look like it was collided with at left of box.

Is there like a particle/effect or behaviour I can use to have a "breaking" effect on the box when something collides with it?

spikey - if your box is completely symmetrical like the sprite in your post, then all you have to do is rotate the sprite to the side where the collision occurs, then the "break" animation will play on the correct side.