Startled...

I had occasion to watch this a couple of days ago; I don't think I'd ever seen it before. I found it rather banal, and my attention was flagging, until I heard Burl Ives utter the line: "The little critters of nature - they don't know that they're ugly..." beginning the 'Ugly Bug Ball.' This of course I recognized instantly, as one of the lines in Ren & Stimpy's 'Happy Happy Joy Joy' song.

Evidently the R&S song is composed of a number of lines Burl Ives uttered at one time or another, the line from 'Summer Magic' being one of them.

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy is sung by a character named Stinky Wizzleteats who is a parody of Burl Ives. Several references to famous songs and movie quotes are sprinkled through the song giving it its surreal air including:

"This is a song about a whale" – "The Whale" Burl Ives Sings Little White Duck and Other Children's Favorites
"I'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs!", "If'n you ain't the grandaddy of all liars", "I told you I'd shoot, but you didn't believe me, why wouldn't you believe me?" – The Big Country lines spoken by (or paraphrased from) his character Rufus Hannassey
"The little creatures of nature, they don't know they're ugly" – Ives' intro to the song "The Ugly Bug Ball" from Disney's Summer Magic (1963)
"That's very funny, a fly marrying a bumblebee" – from "Mother Goose Songs Burl Ives Sings Little White Duck and Other Children's Favorites
The record cover Stimpy pulls the record from has a character on the front that has a similar face and Van Dyke beard as Burl Ives.
http://www.thefullwiki.org/The_Ren_%26_Stimpy_Show