Battle over Barbie! Doll creator’s daughter fights for her dad’s legacy after toy giant Mattel cuts all mention of him as it strives to protect the brand’s wholesome image from his life of drugs, orgies and suicide
New York Times bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer is the author of Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel, and a frequent contributor to DailyMail.com.
The daughter of the man who claimed he invented Barbie is speaking out for the first time about how her father’s role in creating the world’s most famous doll has been excised by toy giant Mattel.
After years of being dissed by the company Ann Ryan said it is time to set the record straight about Barbie’s birth in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com
Her father Jack, who killed himself in 1991, was known as a kinky sexual swinger who hosted orgies at his home, she said, and Mattel is desperate to protect the reputation of their best-selling toy from being impugned by of his unorthodox lifestyle.
Instead, she said, Mattel prefers to stick with its story that Barbie was invented by company co-founder Ruth Handler – even though she was a convicted felon who was kicked out of the company for cooking the books.
Speaking out for the first time, Ann Ryan, 67, claims that letters and emails she has sent to the company seeking access to internal records and archives that she said would prove her father’s role as the inventor of the world’s most famous doll have consistently been ignored.
‘It’s time to set the record straight’ she said, about her father’s paternity of Barbie, the 11′ doll born 63 years ago that he designed with long legs, a thin waist and perky breasts, and that have sold in the billions for Mattel.
One of the reasons for her father’s blacklisting, she believes, is how he lived his life.
Ryan, who committed suicide in 1991 at 65, was married five times. He was a kinky sexual swinger who hosted orgies at his faux castle home – a lifestyle that long embarrassed Handler, who died at age 85 in 2002, who feared it could tarnish Barbie’s reputation.
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