That's very funny. Think of yourself as fortunate. I grew up adoring the thing, so that it's still hard to think of synthesis without a Model D's image appearing in my mind. It was the gold standard for all things synthesizer. Hence, when I first got back into synthesizer about eight years ago, I instinctively went straight for a Voyager Old School. Now that, I admit, was pure nostagia. Live and learn.
I get it now, but I had to literally force myself to listen to a couple of Moog classics in the beginning. As a teenager, I would listen to those 70s prog records - especially ELP and the likes (the sort of super virtuoso bands) - and I couldn't help but constantly smirk about those sounds that didn't age too well in my opinion. It was a bit like watching a science fiction series from the 1960s with its obnoxious set design or an Ed Wood film for that matter. It had something trashy about it just like all these computer games soundtracks from the 80s and 90s. So that's basically where I come from.
And what I meant by cheesy is connected a lot to of clichés, and that would include people like Stevie Wonder too: Moog leads, Moog basses, the typical sawtooth or square fifths, and all that stuff stuck in the collective memory. I dunno, there's a very typical sonic palette associated with the Moogs and especially the Minimoog (especially in the genres Fusion, Prog Rock, and Funk). It's stronger than with instruments like the ARP 2600 and the Odyssey, or the EMS synths - not even talking about Buchla here. I'm not saying though that there are no other synths that come close to that sort of stereotype perception. The MS-20 comes to my mind, for example. Anyway, other synths seemed to be more interesting to me, purely because they haven't been used and heard that often.
I consider this to be my favorite demonstration of the Minimoog though: