Barbie's Secret: Creator Was Kinky Swinger

New book looks at man behind the doll
By Sarah Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 9, 2009 11:53 AM CST
Barbie's Secret: Creator Was Kinky Swinger
Jerry Oppenheimer's "Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel" comes out next month.   (Wiley)

If you always thought Barbies were a little creepy, this might be why. The doll's creator was a "full-blown seventies-style swinger" with "a manic need for sexual gratification," a new book reveals. Jack Ryan, who was once married to Zsa Zsa Gabor, held orgies at his LA mansion and often visited hookers, from "high-class call girls to streetwalkers," the New York Post reports.

Another of Ryan's ex-wives was the voice of Mattel's talking Barbies. "He once said to me he loved me being tall so he could stick his nose in my boobs when he hugged me," she said. Jerry Oppenheimer's Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel spills about Ken, too. The Barbie and Ken dolls were named after the Mattel founder's kids; the real Ken was secretly gay and died of AIDS. (More Barbie stories.)

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