I believe it was released in 1975. Walt knew children and overall family taste very well.
Movies made by the Disney Studios after 1973 were heavy in those things as you say, resulting in the drop in revenues. I labeled them "bombs" as I was referring to the departure from the family type. There was a big drip in earning, all of which helped to bring out the today's Disney troubles.
You're right!
Did you see "It's a Wonderful Life" with James Stewart and Donna Reed last night? Now here is a classic made in 1948.
No, I don't think it was a departure from the family type. After all, remember how much money the main studios lost in the early 70's trying to repeat the success of the "The Sound of Music" with one big budget musical after another. Have you seen "Hello Dolly" ? That thing in present dollars must have cost a fortune.
It is that the family market wasn't there. A massive cultural paradigm shift was making the family movie as obsolete as the Ed Sullivan-style variety show. During the 70s cultural consensus broke down completely. The market fragmented into the cultural left and the cultural right. In TV the shows that appealed to older, rural viewers (Mayberry RFD, Gomer Pyle, Red Skelton Show, Petticoat Junction) were dumped in favor of the new sitcoms aimed at urban sophisticated audiences (All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore Show, etc).
Disney did not depart from the family movie during the 70's. They just made the same stuff they had been making in the 50's and 60's for an audience that had outgrown them. They didn't adjust their saccharine depictions of kids to the fact that kids since 1970 grow up a whole lot faster. Children nowadays understand that babies don't come from storks.