The guns in the Apes cartoon are almost lasers. It’s also really just plain bad TV, but it is from that era when it was apparently the law that cartoons made for kids needed to be as cheap as possible with the thinnest stories available.
Action For Children’s television also sought to censor anything they personally found improper (it was the era that Tom & Jerry had to become friends). The head ladies of it when forced to watch the end product said that it wasn’t entertaining but at least it wasn’t offensive.
BLEH.