[lemondrop.com]-Admit it, you were one of those girls who put Barbie in some compromising positions when you were younger. It turns out that’s just part of the doll’s history: A new book says that the man who helped design Barbie was “a ‘full-blown ’70s-style swinger” with “a manic need for sexual gratification'” (as the New York Post so delicately puts it).

In the soon-to-be-released book “Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel,” author Jerry Oppenheimer spills secrets about the sex life of toy designer Jack Ryan (no, not the Tom Clancy protagonist portrayed by Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Alec Baldwin onscreen).

According to one of Oppenheimer’s sources, designer Ryan (pictured) would talk about creating his masterpiece in creepy detail: “It was like listening to somebody talk about a sexual episode, almost like listening to a sexual pervert.”

The book alleges that Ryan patronized prostitutes, threw orgies and sought out women who looked like Barbie.

Ryan’s strange psychodynamics with the doll will be no surprise to those who know their toy history. Ryan always seemed to want Barbie to walk the line between sexy and skanky, and when the prototypes of the doll came back from Japan, he filed off the nipples because, according to The Telegraph, “the Japanese had not understood the subtleties of western sexual iconography.”

He also was so enamored with Barbie’s pull-string talk boxes that he had some fitted into the stone lions at his Bel Air mansion.

The eponymous Ken doll isn’t scandal-free, either. The toy was named after the son of a Mattel founder. According to Oppenheimer, the real-life Ken grew up “humiliated” by the link, and became a closeted gay man who died of complications relating to AIDS.