I personally like the Grumman Duck. It looks like it was intended to do a job, and does it.
Hah!
If you thought the Grumman Duck was ugly, you should have seen the Great Lakes XSG amphibious biplane that lost the same US Navy competition. The XSG configuration was similar, but lacked a huge chunk of fuselage between the rear gunner and the fin. IOW the Great Lakes looked like a Levasseur PL-21 rear-ended a Grumman Duck! XGS had a better field of fire than the Duck, but with only 450 hp. it was too slow.
OTOH Duck has a certain utilitarian charm. That cavernous fuselage was easy to adapt for a variety of roles: recce, spotting fall of shells, search, rescue, medical stretcher patient, target tug, admiral's barge, etc.. A Duck was the last plane to flee the Phillippines with 6 humans on board. See C.P. Romula's book "I saw the fall of the Phillppines (Doubleday, NY, 1943)
Anigrand Craftworks will cheerfully sell you 1/72 scale, resin kits of Great Lakes XSG and the later Columbia XJL-1 monoplane designed to replace the Grumman Duck.