Man who created Barbie and Ken dolls was 'kinky swinger with manic need for sexual gratification'

By David Gardner for MailOnline
Updated: 12:58 EST, 8 January 2009

The man who designed Barbie and Ken was a kinky swinger with ‘a manic need for sexual gratification,’ according to an explosive new book.

Jack Ryan, whose wives included Hollywood actress Zsa Zsa Gabor,  surrounded himself with busty ‘Barbie’ clones and threw wild orgies at  his luxurious Bel-Air, California mansion.

Ryan, who died in 1991 aged 65, designed toys like Barbie and Ken, Hot  Wheels and the Chatty Cathy talking doll during his years as a top  executive for Mattel.

'Manic desire': Jack Ryan, seen here with wife Zsa Zsa Gabor, had a sexual motivation for creating Barbie and Ken according to a new book

'Manic desire': Jack Ryan, seen here with wife Zsa Zsa Gabor, had a sexual motivation for creating Barbie and Ken according to a new book

But author Jerry Openheimer claims Ryan had a seamy side that sullies  the carefully protected image of his best-known creation.

In ‘Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel’, Oppenheimer says that  Yale University-educated Ryan was a ‘full blown seventies-style  swinger’ who patronised ‘high class call girls to streetwalkers’ in his quest for excitement.

Five times married Ryan also indulged in wife-swapping, claims the book.

Even more disturbingly, Ryan’s kinky motivations played a part in his  design of the world’s favourite doll.

‘When Jack talked about creating Barbie it was like listening to  somebody talk about a sexual episode, almost like listening to a sexual pervert,’ Ryan’s friend, Stephen Gnass told the author.

Gwen Florea, who was the voice of Barbie in a line of talking dolls,  said: ‘He once said to me he loved me being so tall so he could stick  his nose in my boobs when he hugged me.'

Barbie - who is 50 years old in March - and Ken were named after the children of Mattel founders Ruth and Elliot Handler.

Barbie and Ken

Dark secret: Ken, seen here with Barbie, was reportedly based on a gay man who endured a lifetime of taunts for having the doll named after him

But Oppenheimer said the real life Ken was a closeted gay man who was diagnosed with AIDS before his death in 1994 in New York’s Greenwich  Village.

Oppenheimer said Ken Handler ‘grew up embarrassed and humiliated by  having an anatomically incorrect boy doll named after him with no hint  of genitalia.’

He was married with three children, but the book claims: ‘To all those who knew him, Ken Handler was a wonderful father, a loving husband –  but there was another side to Ken. And in 1990 he was formally  diagnosed with AIDS.

'His parents and wife were shocked.’