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The cliché part is due to its enormous popularity. As the article points out, after the cartoon was published, the phrase became part of the common lexicon. Hence, your view of it being cliché.

That's like a friend's reaction to seeing Casablanca: "Everybody is speaking in clichés!"

The dialogue was original to the film, but in terms of plot and characters, Umberto Eco actually thought that Casablanca was full of clichés, and that this was the secret of his success: he titled his essay “Casablanca, or, The Clichés are Having a Ball” (1994), and wrote “Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us.” https://biblioklept.org/2013/05/26/casablanca-or-the-cliches...

Or Every Shakespeare play. “Out, Out damn spot.”

Things become cliched through repetition. The _first_ occurrence by definition _isn't_ cliched, since it's the thing all the others were repeating.

Of course this isn’t really monumental, but it can be hard to understand history if you’re looking at it through a modern lens. Humor was different, and this phrase was not in the lexicon like it is now. It was fresher then.