Peculiar Particles

I based mine off this disintegration particle effect.

I originally tried to do this with my olaf figure but the particles were not emitting where I wanted so I switched to a cube.

Unfortunately, when exporting it hiding all my effects so I did a screen recording. The tutorial did mention that he had trouble with the particles with the newer version of blender so I figured it was that.

Here's what was rendered:

What I saw and thought would be rendered: