A new book reveals shocking secrets about Barbie designer Jack Ryan.

In "Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel," many behind-the-scenes secrets about Barbie's creators are revealed. Apparently Jack Ryan, Barbie's designer, was a "full-blown seventies-style swinger" with "a manic need for sexual gratification." At one time, the Yale-educated Ryan was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor -- he surrounded himself with busty blondes.

His 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." Ew! Jack reportedly 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.

The book also reveals that the son of Mattel founders Ruth and Elliot Handler named the Ken doll after their own son. But the real-life Ken "grew up embarrassed and humiliated by having an anatomically incorrect boy doll named after him . . . [with] no hint of genitalia." Ouch.

Who knew Barbie and Ken had such a sordid past?