Cutting up enemies?

I'm wondering, would it be possible to have enemies be cut up upon being hit by player 1? Like, let's say I have an enemy, 16 pixels tall, upon being hit the image being split up.

My initial thoughs about a way to do this: When hit, replace the enemy with 2 objects that look like the top and bottom part.

Your thoughts on this?

that's propably the most logical way to do it.
unless you wish to try the other way around that the original enemy is actually 2 objects stacked on top of eachother (which is considerably harder to do.)