The Grove Thumb Joystick is cool. It will be great to have a version of it with the connector moved to the back (similar to Rotary Angle Sensor-panel mount version)
Hi there,
You know Adafruit and Sparkfun both have units with no connector and You could probably solder the connector to the back and reverse the wires also. But I agree if grove offered such a configuration would be cooler’ 
HTH
GL 
PJ