It's a hot topic right now just like when Bitcoin was first booming. Although today and yesterday especially so because of this hack.

But Ethereum is not booming. Isn't it a consensus that it is mostly speculative and most of these ICOs are money grabs and no working products ever get released other than prototypes to raise money?

Yes the price has increased by 4000% in couple of months this year but most reasonable people agree it is a pure speculation / gambling.

I'd say that's a matter of opinion, not consensus. Plenty of us have a different opinion, including people from some large corporations in the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, who say they hope to put applications on the public Ethereum chain after scalability improves.