page_title: Let's Go to the Mall
section_title: Release
hierarchical_section_title: Let's Go to the Mall / Release
caption_attribution_description: English: Cobie Smulders on the CBS Comedies Premiere Party Sponsored by Flo TV, Area on La Cienega, Los Angeles
context_page_description: "Let's Go to the Mall" is a song written by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays for the CBS television series How I Met Your Mother. The song was performed by Canadian actress Cobie Smulders in the role of Robin Scherbatsky, who has a secret past of being a teenage Canadian pop star and adopted the stage name Robin Sparkles during the time. Thomas and Bays originally came up with the idea and spent weeks developing the story with writer Kourtney Kang. The song was first featured in the form of a faux music video in the episode "Slap Bet" that aired on November 20, 2006, before the song was digitally released as a single on September 4, 2007. The track later appeared on the soundtrack album How I Met Your Music.
  "Let's Go to the Mall" is a teen pop song, in which Robin invites people to come to the shopping mall and have fun. The lyrics contain references to both the 1980s and Canadian culture, such as jelly bracelets and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. "Let's Go to the Mall" garnered generally positive reviews from both television and music critics, who praised its catchiness and humor. Several media publications listed it among the show's best musical sequences.
context_section_description: The song was first featured in "Slap Bet", the ninth episode in season 2, which aired on November 20, 2006. The episode was originally titled "Robin Sparkles," but it was changed to "Slap Bet" in order to avoid giving away the ending. Prior to its premiere, the creators also put up a page for Robin Sparkles on MySpace, a "creative" way to promote the show that the creators came up with from the beginning of the season. "Let's Go to the Mall" and "Hey Beautiful" were released as digital singles by 20th Century Fox Records and Fox Music on September 4, 2007, and later included in the soundtrack album How I Met Your Music (2012). Portions of the music video were shown in "Slap Bet". The full three-minute footage became available on MySpace and CBS.com after its TV premiere; there was a tag at the end of the episode that encouraged viewers to watch the full video online. It was also included in the show's season 2 DVD release.
  "Let's Go to the Mall" garnered generally positive reviews from both television and music critics. Perigard was impressed by Robin Sparkles's "genius" first appearance, and further called the song "an insanely catchy comic number". Eric Goldman of IGN enjoyed Smulders' "exuberant" performance, declaring it "may be the most awesome thing [he has] ever seen" and said that the backup dancers were "perfectly cast". Tom Eames of Digital Spy thought that the song was "actually pretty damn good," while calling the video "possibly HIMYM's finest moment" and "pure gold". Amos Barshad of Vulture called the "Tiffany-indebted" music video an "undeniable highlight" for the show, and it was the "closest the show has ever come to touching the kind of sharp pop-culture-skewering 30 Rock tosses off several times an episode." Eric Eisenberg of Cinema Blend praised Smulders' performance as "maddening and hilarious," while calling the track "one of the best TV-created pop songs of all time".
  Vlada Gelman of TVLine described Robin Sparkles first appearance as "infectious" and "an unexpected and hilarious surprise". She went on to rank it as the show's "Best Song and Dance Moments." Fox News ranked it as the second-best musical moments of the show, said that the song set the standard for the show's follow-up musical numbers by its "compulsively catchy tune".  On VH1 "Best Best (Fake) Songs Written For TV" list, Stacy Lambe ranked the song at number two, and wrote that it is "the best mall jam. Ever." Spin ranked it as number eight in "The 50 Best Fictional Songs of All Time" list, summarizing the song as "the late-'80s mall-pop explosion" and one of the "pitch-perfect period singles" from the show. Rolling Stone named it the second-best moment from the show, described the video as "a pitch-perfect send-up of neon revelry, synchronized dance, bad rapping, and corny, faux-candid close-ups á la Debbie Gibson".
  "Slap Bet" received a 3.1/8 Nielsen rating/share in the 18–49 demographic and attracted 8.85 million American viewers during its initial broadcast. Within the first 10 days after its premiere, the full music video of "Let's Go to the Mall" attracted more than 300,000 viewers on MySpace and the CBS official website. On YouTube, it reached more than 430,000 viewers as of March 2009. Promotion through social media helped the show generate an estimated 600,000 additional viewers for the next episode. Variety reported that Robin Sparkles's debut appearance attracted 5,000 new friends on her MySpace page, and more than 1 million new viewers for the show. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the song has sold 4,000 digital downloads in the United States as of August 2008.
caption: Smulders' performance received critical acclaim. She reprised the role of Robin Sparkles in three more episodes.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2011:03:09 01:18:28", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5652", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1144", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1377"}