All Trick No Treat

**"All Trick No Treat"** is the ninth episode of the first season of *Power Players*. It premiered on October 19, 2019, on Cartoon Network.

## Synopsis

On Halloween, Axel gets too caught up in the scares and loses track of the fun – just in time for an infiltration by the worst trick ‘r’ treater of all, Madcap!

## Plot

The episode begins on Halloween night, and Sarge Charge and Bearbarian are arriving at the workshop because Axel asks them to come down to see him. While searching for their leader, the two toys are starting to feel scared of the Halloween atmosphere in the basement and they’re about to leave to go back to Axel's room. But on their way out, the two toys are freaking out when the Halloween decorations all start moving and a kid dressed as a vampire appears and scares them both completely. The kid turns out to be Axel who only wants Sarge and Bearbarian to come down to the basement so he could scare them as a prank. Zoe have also arrived in the basement and asks Axel if he wants to go trick-or-treating with her around the neighborhood, but Axel refuses since Uncle Andrew has to work late and leaves him in charge of the shop and the trick-or-treaters at the door. Zoe understands but before she leaves, she advises to Axel that “ it’s only a treat if everyone’s in on the trick”. However, a few seconds after Zoe left, the doorbell to the shop rings and Axel is surprised that a trick-or-treater, who’s dressing up as a ghost, decided to show up early to collect their candies. But when he opens the door to greet the visitor, he becomes even more surprised when the “trick-or-treater” lifts off his ghost costume to reveal himself to be Madcap who’s standing on top of Porcupunk, and Orangutank.

Axel immediately transforms himself into Action Axel, and the Power Players all start fighting their intruders before the villains could enter Andrew’s workshop to steal more Minergy powers. But right in the middle of their fight, they immediately stop when the doorbell suddenly rang again. Realizing that there’s a trick-or-treater outside and Action Axel doesn’t have enough time to detransform himself since Uncle Andrew is coming downstairs to check on him, the toys all hide behind the Halloween decorations to avoid being seen. While finding a place to hide, Action Axel and Madcap were both forced to hide in a nearby bucket of candies, just when Uncle Andrew arrives in the basement. Since he didn’t see Axel in the shop, Uncle Andrew suspects that he’s gone trick-or-treating with Zoe and decides to take care of the trick-or-treater at the door himself. After opening the door to see a little girl with a pumpkin wagon as her bucket, Uncle Andrew pours the candies from the bucket into the wagon but he unknowingly pours both Madcap and Action Axel inside it too. With Action Axel and Madcap being mistakenly taken away by the little girl in the streets of the city, Sarge and Bearbarian were both forced to settle a truce with Porcupunk and Orangutank to get their respective leaders back and once they finish working together, the two groups would resume their fighting and their roles as enemies. And since the toys must not get seen by the civilians who are out trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, they have to use a nearby pumpkin as their costume to get past them.

While the little girl continues to collect more candies to fill up her wagon somewhere in the streets, Madcap wants to continue his fight with Action Axel inside the wagon, but he stops when they start bonding over their shared love for caramel candies. While Action Axel and Madcap end their fight to eat the candies inside the wagon to past the time, their rescue party doesn’t get along with each other as Sarge and Porcupunk both fight over each other’s leadership of the group that leads to them almost getting caught by the nearby trick-or-treaters. After their argument causes the four toys to all get out of their pumpkin disguise, the rescue party all see the girl nearby at Luka’s house. While the girl is distracted by eating the sour candies Luka gave her, the rescue party gets near the wagon and Sarge suggests that they should ram the wagon’s side and tip it over to get their respective leaders out. However, unbeknownst to the rescue party, Action Axel and Madcap both have the same idea too and because both sides are ramming the bucket at the same time, they unknowingly ended up knocking each other over. This causes a loud racket that the girl hears it nearby, forcing the search party to hide behind the Halloween decorations to avoid being seen.

But just when the girl is about to pour the sour candies into her wagon, Madcap appears out of the candy pile and scares her. This causes Bearbarian to come out of hiding and knocks the wagon bucket over with his World Breaker hammer, spilling Action Axel, Madcap, and the candy pile into the ground. The toys were seen moving in front of the girl causes her to get scared and she runs off crying in fear. After the search party helps out their respective leaders recover from their trip inside the wagon, the two groups both resume their roles as each other’s enemies and the villains all leave to get back to the workshop to get more Minergy. But before the three Power Players could catch up with the villains, the trio stops when they see the trick-or-treater girl crying nearby. Bearbarian realizes that they and the villains have ruined her Halloween night fun by scaring her and spilling all her candies to the ground, and Action Axel agrees with him, remembering Zoe’s advice to him from earlier that “it’s only a treat if everyone is in on the trick”. He, Bearbarian, and Sarge all decide to stop and cheer the girl up first before they could continue their fight with the villains. After Bearbarian and Sarge both round up the candies and put them in another Halloween bucket that’s nearby, Action Axel detransforms back to his normal self and hands the bucket to where the girl is. However, Bearbarian suddenly follows Axel and talks to the girl, saying that the team promises that they would protect her candy loot. Axel is angry at Bearbarian for revealing his secret and existence as a living toy to the girl, but the girl mistakes Bearbarian as a “pixy” instead. Axel decides to go with the girl mistaking Bearbarian as a pixy as a way to cover up their secret, reminding Bearbarian that he’s supposed to be hiding. But he then has an idea of how he and the Power Players could stop Madcap, Orangutank, and Porcupunk, and he asks the girl for her help. The girl agrees and Axel explains to her his plan.

Outside of the Toy Store, Madcap is trying to open the front door to get inside. However, when Madcap tries to blast the door to make it open, a blast suddenly bounces back and hits him, knocking himself and his henchmen backward. The three villains are each trapped onto a spider-web and a toy spider appears, causing Porcupunk to get scared and he rolls away in fear. Unbeknownst to the villains, it is Sarge who used the spider decoration to scare Porcupunk and he signals Bearbarian and Action Axel for phase two of their plan. After Orangutank and Madcap get themselves off the spider-web, the two villains are heading up the stairs to get back to the front door. However, on their way there, two skeleton decoration arms appear and touch Orangutank, causing the cybernetic toy chimp to get scared and runs away in fear. With Madcap all alone, he decides that he should get the Minergy by himself without needing his cowardly henchmen’s help. But just when he’s about to get up the stairs, he hears Action Axel and Bearbarian laughing behind a pumpkin. Madcap finds them behind the pumpkin and mocks them for trying to scare him after what they have successfully done to Orangutank. Just then, Action Axel points at someone behind Madcap and makes him turn around sees a “monster” with a pumpkin for a head and a white blanket covering its body. The “monster” moans at Madcap, causing him to get scared and runs away from the house, declaring to himself that he really hates Halloween and wishing he should have taken a day off from his villainous schemes on that day.

With all the villains gone from his house, Action Axel detransforms back to his normal self and lifts up the pumpkin head to reveal that the “monster” is actually the same trick-or-treater girl. And since the girl couldn’t see anything in the pumpkin head, Axel tells her that she had successfully scared Madcap away while lying to her that the other “pixies” have chased after Madcap to cover up the Power Players’ secrets. The girl thanks Axel for getting rid of the evil “pixy” and she leaves the Monkey Toys to grab her candies. After the girl leaves, Axel expresses how lucky he is for growing out of being scared on Halloween night, unlike Madcap, just when Zoe appears from the house gate and contradicts his statement by scaring both him and Bearbarian, ending the episode.

## Characters

### Major Characters

* Axel Mulligan/Action Axel
* Sarge Charge
* Bearbarian
* Madcap
* Porcupunk
* Orangutank
* Unnamed trick-or-treater girl

### Minor Characters

* Zoe
* Uncle Andrew
* Luka
* Civilians

## Trivia

* In the French version, the episode is called "Un bonbon ou une farce", meaning "A candy or a prank".
* This is the first holiday-themed episode in the series.
* This episode takes place on Halloween night.
* Throughout the episode, Axel is wearing his Dracula costume instead of his regular attire
* This is the first episode in which Axel is seen eating in his superhero alter ego. This also marks the first episode in which Madcap is seen eating.
* At the beginning of the episode, Bearbarian mentions that he doesn't like the darkness. His fear would later serve as a plot point for "Gathering Dark".
* There're several toys on the shelf of the repair shop that reference to real-life franchises. This includes: *Fisher Price*, *Sick Bricks*, and *Thomas & Friends*.
* This is the first episode in which Bobbie Blobby, Masko, Slobot and Galileo are all absent. This also marks the first time all of the Power Players didn't appear together in an episode.
* This is the first episode in which someone, other than Axel and Zoe, sees the Power Players as living toys. In this episode, Bearbarian accidentally reveals himself and talks to the trick-or-treater girl but in order to cover up their secret, Axel lies to the girl that Bearbarian and Sarge are both "Halloween pixies".

### Errors

* Throughout the episode, Axel is wearing his Dracula costume. However, when he transforms, the transformation sequence is kept the same and it didn't feature him wearing the costume.

## References

1. ↑ https://www.animationmagazine.net/tv/cartoon-network-scares-up-special-october-toons/
2. ↑ https://www.france.tv/france-4/power-players/power-players-saison-1/1435813-un-bonbon-ou-une-farce.html

**Future episodes**
*Saving Madcap* • *Impactful!* • *A Noise in the Night* • *When It Itches...* • *Broken* • *What is Happening to Uncle Andrew?* • *Seek!* • *Triple Game* • *Sergeant Lacharge* • *The All-New All Beautiful Power Players* • *Night Operation* • *A Good Spirit* • *No Pot* • *Pyrant Park* • *The Load* • *The Kings of the Jungle* • *Bad Track* • *The Funniest* • *A Maxi Villain - Part 1* • *A Maxi Villain - Part 2*

**Future specials**
A Maxi Villain