I gave it a fair shake. But you’re right, seems obscure enough to be lost media adjacent. Ended up scrubbing 2 DuckTales episodes, skimming the ugly duckling (1997), and watched half an episode of Charlie chalk. My strategy was to ignore the name Howard entirely. Here’s a list of animated ducks for your reference.
That show confused the crap outta me. They did their best to make the MC seem completely worthless. And it felt like the writers were straight ripping on the target audience the whole time. Look no further than the opening scene to know what I mean