New Mexico Fans Of Oppenheimer And Barbie Will Love This

Besides having their movies released at the same time, Oppenheimer and Barbie have another thing in common. Rockets.

A great deal of rocket and bomb research was done in New Mexico so, it's possible, Barbie may have been "created", so to speak, in the land of enchantment.

That was my initial angle, a possible NM connection, but then the story got WAY better.

Barbie's designer, Jack Ryan ... not Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan ... worked for the US government, designing missiles for the Pentagon.

Yep, the man who made it possible for Barbie's hips to swivel and her joints to bend was a genuine "rocket scientist".

Mattel parted ways with Ryan who then sued them in 1980.

The Mattel factory never suffered a missile attack so, I guess, Ryan was cool with the outcome.

The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum but Ryan's daughter doesn't want her Dad going uncredited for inventing Barbie.

Side note, the rift between Ryan and Mattel stemmed from his apparent, debaucherous lifestyle.

He once held off LA's S.W.A.T. unit while drunk, "coked up" and holding one of his kids hostage. That came later, initially, it was his kinky sex life that Mattel didn't like.

He even chose lovers who looked like Barbie and would send those that didn't to plastic surgeons.

His daughter, Ann Ryan, doesn't deny Ryan's "hobbies" but doesn't want the lady currently known as Barbie's creator to get the credit.

According to dailymail.co.uk:

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. - dailymail.com.uk

Wow.

Who knew Barbie's "parents" had such sorted pasts?