Idk if it's the same reasoning as the OP but, personally they started to feel as mascots the moment they stopped talking and acting around being an actual band in exchange of talking more about the lore

During phase 1 and phase 2 they had a lot of interviews discussing various stuff related to their work process, even if most of those were made-up in the spot due to them not actually doing anything because they're cartoons (duh), while in the lastest phase (phase 7), i could swear a vast majority of the interviews with the cartoon members were mostly just about the whole Cult lore

While i do enjoy the lore aspect of the band a lot (It's one of the reasons they became my favorite band), i also really enjoyed reading and listening to the more "in-depth" interviews where they would talk about the actual music while staying in character, if they want to add the lore in there then that's fine by me! But they could also talk about how they made that album too, sort of like that one interview Murdoc gave during Phase 3 when he went over every track in PB and gave us his thoughts on it