Barbie creator had a "a manical need for sexual gratification"

New York, Jan 9 (ANI): A new book has uncovered the sex secrets of people behind the world's most popular dolls - Barbie and Ken.

Titled 'Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel', the book has revealed that while the man who designed Barbie was a "full-blown seventies-style swinger" with "a manic need for sexual gratification," Ken was named after a man who had a secret gay-life.

The book authored by Jerry Oppenheimer is set to hit the shelves next month.

In the book, it was said that Jack Ryan, the Yale-educated designer who popularized Barbie, staged orgies at his Bel-Air mansion.

Ryan, whose wives included Zsa Zsa Gabor, surrounded himself with busty Barbie clones, including Gwen Florea, who was the "voice of Barbie" in a line of talking dolls.

"He once said to me he loved me being tall so he could stick his nose in my boobs when he hugged me," The New York Post quoted her as saying in the book.

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

The book claims that Ryan took calls at Mattel from a madam and patronized "high-class call girls to streetwalkers," including a "very thin and child-like" hooker and "somehow rationalized that he was the only man in her life" until he was diagnosed with gonorrhea.

Barbie and Ken were named after the kids of Mattel founders Ruth and Elliot Handler.

However, Ken was not too happy with the honour and he "grew up embarrassed and humiliated by having an anatomically incorrect boy doll named after him . . . [with] no hint of genitalia."

Oppenheimer said that although, ken got married and went on to have three kids, he was a closeted gay.

"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," said the author.

Ken finally passed away in 1994 in Greenwich Village, but obits didn't mention the disease. (ANI)