The antennas I've seen coming apart (from age and abuse) are Motorola and Kenwood commercial. According to their part numbers, these are UHF wideband only, not dual purpose, and they do specify other antennas for dual purpose. I didn't do a full autopsy on them, I just noticed that they appeared to be a brass helical coil, very definitely not criss-cross construction. I thought that was a curious way to build an antenna, using a "coiled spring" which would be very good at keeping a stiff but flexible antenna, but more complex in terms of how the coil would behave, and more expensive than other options. (Perhaps not, springs can be cheap.)
Interesting Wiki article, especially the conjecture that the coil *may* be shorted out and acting as a linear conductor with possibly complex design issues. That would help explain why some brands of antennas seem to outperform others while all of them are "just" a simple quarter wave.
Still, it doesn't seem to be of any performance benefit to use a helical in any way, compared to a 1/4 wave of the same overall height. Given the durability of modern materials, maybe the ducky really is past its time?