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Samsonite had used many promotional vehicles in the past for their LEGO products, and the LIFE cereal promotion was a natural expansion of that.

It was advertised on LIFE cereal boxes starting in late 1971:

That date can be confirmed multiple ways, including the box of cereal itself (LIFE cereal changed box arts every year, and that particular style can also be found with 1971's more well-known Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory LIFE cereal box) as well as the form number for the instructions.

So by sending $1.00 and two box tops, one could own a puppet set. It is the only Model Maker set that I'm aware of that does not have any internal number assigned to it:

It was quite a novel thing for the time, as there was no European LEGO equivalent. Even now, as thousands of LEGO sets have been designed and released, it remains entirely unique:

This promotion was fairly popular and the manuals for the puppet set are decently common even though it only ran for one season. Boxed examples are out there as well, with "LEGO BUILDING TOY" as the subject and Denver as the shipping city.

It also provided a healthy number of alternate models should one decide to purchase more puppet sets:

There were also other sets one could order:

Set No. 1

Set No. 1 was a 301 piece set also concurrently available through the 1971 Kraft Promotion. It may have continued to use the same packaging from previous Kraft promotions:

Set No. 2

Set No. 2 was a 159-piece assortment also concurrently available through the 1971 Kraft Promotion:

It came with this exclusive idea card, relaying that the set was actually (at least internally) numbered 159:

Set No. 3

Interestingly, Set No. 3 was not available through Kraft in 1971, but had been last available through Kraft in late 1970. It was the addon parts from years previous:

Previously, the above addon pack and the mechanical parts pack were both available through Kraft simultaneously, but for 1971 they were strangely split between these two promotions.