Sandcastles in the Sand
episode of How I Met Your Mother (S3 E16)
"Sandcastles in the Sand" is the 16th episode in the third season of the television series How I Met Your Mother and 60th overall. It originally aired on April 21, 2008.The episode is notable for revisiting Robin Scherbatsky's past as Canadian pop star Robin Sparkles and for introducing the fictional song "Sandcastles in the Sand," a parody of late 1980s and early 1990s pop ballads.
Plot
The episode begins with a montage of Robin from her time as Canadian bubblegum pop star Robin Sparkles. At MacLaren's, Robin announces that her former boyfriend, Simon (James Van Der Beek), will be meeting her there later. Robin describes their break-up: after she loaded his band's equipment into their van after a performance, he dumped her.
The group agrees that every time exes reunite, there is a clear winner and a clear loser. They begin to tally the points for Robin and Simon, awarding Robin five and Simon zero. Robin agrees she will be the clear winner, unless Simon got more attractive. Simon arrives and it is clear he has not: he appears older, less stylish and physically changed from Robin's memories. Despite this, Robin is clearly still smitten with him.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7416049. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sandcastles in the Sand” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.