One of my earliest memories of a cartoon was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKlj9d6J5v8
Now considering Disney had made Bambi in ‘42 this was pretty bad.
I remember, even as a kid, staring at it, wondering why it was so weird.
When I clicked on your link, I saw that cartoon for the first time in 59 years. I first saw it on our black and white TV while watching Cartoon Express, a weekday program hosted by Bill Stulla, who called himself Engineer Bill. He wore a railroad engineer's cap and his props included model trains, railroad whistles and bells.
Engineer Bill also presented other animated features as well, including Spunky and Tadpole, a series about a boy and a bear and their exploits and feats of derring do, Gumby, the adventures of a walking, talking cookie, and Loony Tunes.
it would take a lot more discussion to explain all the reasons (such as the confluence of the motion picture vertical monopolies being broken up,
the rise of TV, the UPA influence, the fall of many cartoon studios (WB MGM and Terry returned under new management several others like Universal/Lantz continued to make shorts into the late 1960s) that a cartoon like Colonel Bleep came about and found a home in the 1st decades of TV - mostly monetary, some artistic - it is a OK program (which had some input from Joseph Barbera) - it’s weak compared to really good programs from Jay Ward or even H-B but looks like a classic next to poor contemporary fare like “Clutch Cargo” or “Bucky and Pepito”