You can craft an upper and turn it into a hopper without needed the piece of redstone required for the hopper

probably makes the most sense to change the upper recipe to just be a hopper so it doesn't have a unique recipe.

Will make that happen.

you can put it in your crafting table and change it into a regular hopper though. Its pretty op if you havent gotten redstone yet

So, create hopper, then turn into an upper, which can be turned back into a hopper.

I'm saying make the upper uncraftable, and change the recipe so it has to be a hopper first turned into an upper. That way it can be safely reverse crafted back to a hopper.