It is an uptempo song sung by Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews), instructing the two children, Jane (Karen Dotrice) and Michael (Matthew Garber) to clean their room.

Realizing what he had, Robert Sherman arrived at work early the next morning with the title of the song "A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down".

[1][2][3] On the television show How I Met Your Mother, in the episode "Last Words", the character Robin Scherbatsky (portrayed by Cobie Smulders) implies to her friend, Ted Mosby (portrayed by Josh Radnor), that it is naive and childish of him to believe that what the kids were given with their medicine truly was sugar, rather implying that what the children were actually given with their medicine was (crack) cocaine,[citation needed] referencing the fact that the kids, at one point in the movie, attempted to jump into paintings with Poppins.

In Shrek the Third, after Queen Lillian (played by Andrews) breaks down the prison walls, she starts humming part of the melody to the song.

After Poppins is melted by the Wicked Witch of the West in Cheshire Crossing, her reconstitution is accelerated after her remains are placed in bathwater and she is provided a teaspoon of table sugar.